Earlier this year, CRN surveyed our membership to determine what we are doing well and where you want us to improve. For the next several months, each issue of The Report will update you on what you told us, and what steps CRN is taking to respond to your direction.
We begin with two of your comments:
Keep focusing on being “responsible.”
CRN members love CRN’s reputation for ethics and responsible behavior. In your mind, CRN stands for integrity. You are proud to be associated with CRN. High integrity is also your goal for our industry. CRN receives a big “thumbs up” here.
What we’re doing to get even better:
The Supplement OWL, the dietary supplement product registry, is CRN’s most ambitious responsibility initiative yet, designed to promote transparency and accountability to regulators, retailers and consumers. This year we have expanded our caffeine voluntary guidelines and added a new guideline for SARMs. We urged FDA to exercise enforcement discretion (which it announced last week) to accommodate our labeling recommendations for probiotics. And we are actively engaged with the Global Retailer & Manufacturers Alliance (GRMA) to bring consensus based standards to third-party GMP inspections.
You want more collaboration.
CRN members want CRN to collaborate more with the other trade associations, and you had the same message for the other trades too. You said, “We want all the trade associations to work together. There is strength in numbers.”
What we’re doing to get even better:
In June, we co-hosted our annual Day on the Hill with AHPA. In May, we co-hosted the Regulatory Summit with AHPA, CHPA, NPA and UNPA. These same groups joined with CRN to introduce and support legislation in the Senate to address SARMs, and our organizations are coordinating our lobbying efforts on the Farm Bill to include multivitamins in SNAP, and communicate regularly with each other on the progress. We also collaborated on a joint consumer advisory about fraudulent products taking advantage of the opioid crisis. The newly revived SIDI Work Group is now a joint initiative of CHPA, CRN and UNPA. Monthly lunches among four of these groups strengthen communication, trust and the division of labor among the organizations. We’re listening!
To make this an ongoing conversation, please tell us additional areas on which you want CRN to focus. Send your thoughts to:
Carl Hyland Senior Director, Membership Development, chyland@crnusa.org