MAY EXTRA
Past Editions—Need to Know Archives
Hey, retailers, if you haven’t been following The Adventures of Sergeant Searchlight, you really need to check out this week’s episode, as well as the previous ones at crnusa.org/sergeantsearchlight.
Sergeant Searchlight is CRN’s way of having a little fun while making a very serious point:
While the dietary supplement market is actually very well-regulated by DSHEA (e.g., manufacturing and labeling requirements, NDINs for new ingredients, etc.) and some additional requirements that have been added since then (e.g., mandatory adverse event reporting, mandatory facility registration), all of these oversight tools presume that FDA knows the universe of dietary supplements that are sold to U.S. consumers.
A mandatory registry of product labels is the final tool in the toolbox—giving FDA visibility into the industry it is supposed to regulate.
This week’s Sergeant Searchlight episode illustrates that retailers can benefit for a supplement registry too because it helps them eliminate products that won’t play by the rules without developing their own certification programs—if it’s not in the registry, don’t put it on the shelf! And interestingly, this becomes a self-executing enforcement tool too: Fringe players who don’t want FDA to find them will find that reputable retailers just won’t sell their products.
Two bills in Congress, S.3677 and H.R.8370, would create a mandatory registry of supplement labels. If you would like to show your support for this legislation, please have your government relations team contact Steve Mister, smister@crnusa.org, to learn more.
For other resources on the Supplement Registry, check out:
- Opinion: Mandatory Listing—Facts, Fiction and Conspiracies
- Mandatory Product Listing: It Won’t 'Wash the Windows' Either!
- PODCAST: A Dose of Sunshine—What the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2026 Really Means
