Republican Senators McCain of Arizona and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota introduced the bill on February 3, “to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to more effectively regulate dietary supplements that may pose safety risks unknown to consumers.”
If passed into law, the bill would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) more control over the dietary supplements industry, including giving the agency immediate recall rights over products suspected of contamination and creating an Accepted Dietary Ingredients list in place of New Dietary Ingredients provisions.
McCain has said a major motivation for the bill is the suspension of six NFL players after they unwittingly took steroid-spiked supplements just over a year ago.
Working with a variety of industry organizations, Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) in the United States has put a call out to opponents of the bill to urge their Senators to block its path.
Speaking from his UK office, executive director of ANH Robert Verkerk told NutraIngredients-USA.com: “It certainly is a Europeanization of DSHEA that McCain is behind. Clearly this is a move towards a potential positive events type approach like we have in Europe…From our point of view the US is very much the last bastion for functional nutritional product innovation. The McCain bill puts a lid on innovation.”
Executive director of ANH-USA Gretchen du Beau said that industry has overwhelmingly backed the call-out and has rallied to fight the legislation.
She said: “We got our action alert out straight away. Close to 15 other organizations have put it out as well…There is a major grassroots movement underway to make sure this bill doesn’t go through.”
Du Beau added that even if the bill does not go through as it stands, the organization fears that it could be passed as part of another “must pass” bill.
The bill can be found online here.
ANH-USA’s action alert is available here.