dietary supplements, American Herbal Products Association, AHPA, report, proposition 65 complaint

January 6, 2009 — Fifty-six dietary supplement marketers have been named by the California Attorney General as defendants in a Proposition 65 complaint alleging failure to warn of the presence of lead in their dietary supplement products, American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) President Michael McGuffin reports in the January 2009 AHPA Report.

“The legal action follows on the heels of the Food and Drug Administration’s release of an analysis of lead levels in 324 multivitamin-mineral products labeled for women and children,” McGuffin noted. “Every company selling supplements in California needs to be aware of this action and how it came about.”

Also in the January AHPA Report:

“Truvia, PureVia Get GRAS Nod From FDA: What Does It Mean For Stevia Products?”

AHPA General Counsel and Klenfeld, Kaplan and Becker Partner Anthony L. Young, Esq., provides a clear explanation of the broader impact of FDA’s “no objection” to Cargill and Whole Earth Sweetners’ GRAS notifications for use of their stevia extracts in certain foods. What is the impact of FDA’s no objection letter on other companies with stevia products? “As with all matters regulatory,” Young writes, “the devil is in the details.”

“2007 NHIS Adds More Diversity to Data on U.S. CAM Use; Discusses Impact of Research, Media on Choice of Therapies”

“There is no meaningful correlation between the number of published studies of a CAM therapy and its use by the U.S. public,” NCCAM and the National Center for Health Statistics report. A new report released Dec. 10, presents selected estimates of complementary and alternative (CAM) therapy use among U.S. adults and the first national data on CAM use by children aged 17 and under.

The January AHPA Report is available to AHPA members at: http://www.ahpa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=99.