TOP INITIATIVES

Research continues to demonstrate the role dietary supplements and functional foods can play for improving performance, faster recovery, and longevity, among other benefits. CRN is developing programs to showcase sports nutrition awareness and growth while protecting these products from unreasonable and uninformed efforts to restrict their sale.

Emerging evidence suggests a relationship between Vitamin D and COVID-19. This new CRN initiative will highlight research being conducted on this relationship, provide insights for the links between Vitamin D levels and COVID-19, and deliver that information to relevant stakeholders.

Retailers provide “the last mile” for getting our products to consumers. CRN will increase our connections with retailers with programs that provide them with increased understanding of our products (e.g., probiotics), our supply chains and the health benefits of our products. 

CRN will launch a new multi-year initiative aimed at improving nutrition and health by increasing access to both our products and to information about the connections between supplements/functional food and better nutrition and health. We will develop new programs to provide these products directly to at-risk populations as well as cultivate policy discussions on how to reduce the nutrition and health disparities with better access to nutritional products and to education on nutrition and health.

Focus on proactive self-care, the pandemic, the ensuing recession, and renewed attention to healthcare access have all combined to create renewed opportunities to advance legislation/Administration support to include reimbursement for dietary supplements in Flexible Spending Accounts/Healthcare Savings Accounts (FSAs/HSAs). CRN commits to drive this conversation and advance this policy directive.

Even as we advocate for mandatory listing, the industry’s voluntary registry, the Supplement OWL, provides a template for that requirement, providing visibility and accountability by its participants. CRN will devote new resources to increase industry participation in, and stakeholder awareness of, the Supplement OWL and to expand its reach.

CRN will build on its efforts in 2019 and 2020 to establish a legal pathway for CBD and other cannabinoids in dietary supplements. We will continue our leadership role to advance federal legislation, insist FDA apply the existing dietary supplement regulatory regime to CBD supplements, and influence state-based proposals to regulate CBD at the state level modeled on federal oversight of dietary supplements generally.

CRN strongly supports the creation of a mandatory product listing (MPL) housed at FDA to provide transparency to regulators, retailers and consumers alike. We will redouble our efforts to enact federal legislation to establish an MPL for dietary supplements in the U.S. market.