NOW supports Amazon’s stricter regulatory compliance for supplements

11 Dec 2020 --- Natural products company NOW is welcoming Amazon’s “extensive” move on stricter documentation and labeling requirements for dietary supplements. 

According to NOW, Amazon is instructing all its dietary supplement sellers to comply with current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) required by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by February 2021.

They must also submit a Certificate of Analysis (COA) that verifies those claims, projected to “go a long way” in ensuring consumers receive products with certified ingredients and “clean up the market.”

“If Amazon administers this program well, including banning those who don’t comply, this is a huge, positive step forward,” Dan Richard, NOW’s vice president of global sales and marketing, tells NutritionInsight.

Reporting fraudulent supplements
NOW has reached out to Amazon, offering its support in evaluating the documentation they receive to confirm validity. 

“We’ve seen all the tactics that cheaters try to get away with and we’re happy to share our expertise in working together to expel these fringe companies from the marketplace,” says Richard.

To sell dietary supplements on Amazon, the online retailer requires suppliers to adhere to cGMP and submit a COA.This year, NOW has repeatedly warned several dietary supplements purchasable on Amazon may be fraudulent.

The company tested multiple CoQ10 and SAMe products purchased on Amazon’s website and found “egregious problems” with the material, ranging from low dosage to unstable material and “wildly inaccurate” labels. 

Last month, additional tests on ALA, confirmed by a third-party lab, identified similar failings. The natural products company found varying levels of potency of the antioxidant, with only two out of fifteen brands reaching the 100 percent potency mark.

Compliance checklist
Besides a COA from an ISO/IEC 17025 accredited laboratory, Amazon’s standards require supplement sellers to submit a letter of guarantee from the product’s manufacturer. There are also sharper criteria for product images, labeling, online detail pages and packaging.

“All of the established brands have been adhering to GMPs for many years, but the brands you never heard of that sell online have been an ongoing problem,” explains Richard. 

“Unfortunately, they account for an enormous amount of supplements that consumers buy and use.” 

Amazon specifically prohibits over 1,300 supplement products for not meeting the checklist requirements. The online retailer states that this list does not include all supplement products it prohibits.

The Elsevier-published researchers observed that DNP reduces zebra finches’ lifespan (Credit: Antoine Stier).A case example in DNP
One ingredient found in many Amazon-prohibited products, dinitrophenol (DNP), was recently spotlighted in a cohort study published in Elsevier. 

Recently reappearing in weight loss supplements, DNP is a molecule that can decrease the efficiency at which food is converted to cellular energy. 

Researchers from the University of Strasbourg, France, administered DNP to captive zebra finches for four years and found that DNP reduced the birds’ lifespan by 20 percent, or around one year. 

“This would be equivalent to a reduction of approximately 15 years in human life, which should provide a serious warning signal to both current and prospective users, as well as to scientists investigating its use as a medicine,” flags co-author Dr. Antoine Stier.

Critically, the effects of DNP supplementation were not physically evident. The birds demonstrated similar physical performances to the control animals and did not display physiological signs of premature aging. 

By Anni Schleicher

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