Market Updates, Regulations

NPA Maintains Opposition to Mandatory Product Listing After Latest Proposal

The association will continue organizing a grassroots network dedicated to contacting members of Congress in opposition.

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By: Mike Montemarano

The Natural Products Association (NPA) has reiterated its opposition to mandatory product listing (MPL), after U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced another bill seeking to establish MPL for all dietary supplements.
 
The new effort comes after a 2022 bid for MPL failed when it was stripped from the FDA User Fee Reauthorization, an omnibus spending package for which there were no hearings or public debate, which NPA also opposed. At the time, NPA noted, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee expressed concerns about taking similar proposals to the Dietary Supplement Listing Act and including them in user fee legislation, as the provisions were not debated under regular order, no hearings were held, and no formal committee consideration was conducted.
 
Longstanding proponents of MPL, including the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) and the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), each announced that they would not be supporting the bill in its current form either, for various reasons.
 
“NPA remains deeply concerned with this misguided and unnecessary approach to dietary supplements, which are safe and heavily regulated.  This proposal has been rejected repeatedly because it’s bad for consumers and bad for American manufacturers and retailers and it should be rejected again.  We were hoping to have a productive discussion with the Senator and his team but evidently they are not interested in that and only scoring political points,” said Daniel Fabricant, PhD, president and CEO of the Natural Products Association.
 
According to NPA, Durbin and his staff were scheduled to visit an NPA member company for a facility tour and discussion but canceled the meeting without explanation.
 
“The FDA already has access to information regarding who is making dietary supplements, what products are made at which facilities, when new ingredients are introduced into commerce, and whether any products are associated with serious adverse events. This old proposal will hurt consumers and needlessly damage the industry as it mirrors over-the-counter premarket drug regulations and is more stringent than current regulations, including the NDI (New Dietary Ingredient) provision which is a notification rather than a pre-market approval. This bill is entirely at odds with the current regime which has delivered world-class consumer safety and broad access to important nutritional supplements for over a generation.”
 
NPA has succeeded in its opposition to repeated attempts to enact MPL over the course of several years. It has engaged its grassroots network and urged the industry to join thousands of advocates to contact members of Congress to oppose this legislation due to economic harms. The effort has led to over 85,000 emails to Congress opposing MPL.

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