The letter from CRN president and chief executive officer Steve Mister questions McCain’s assertion that current rules writ under the Dietary Supplements and Health Education Act (DSHEA) don’t require dietary supplements to label ingredients.
Mister’s letter also questions the need for an Accepted Dietary Ingredients list that is one of the measures of the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010, and the effect such a requirement would have on the availability of products as retailers may reject the new business burdens.
Speaking to NutraIngredients-USA.com CRN’s senior vice president of communications, Judy Blatman, said the letter had been sent to McCain because his floor statement was peppered with, “false statements”.
“The Bill will turn DSHEA on its head,” she said. “We sent the letter because we work intimately with this regulation every day and there were simply too many factual inaccuracies in the letter and the legislation that needed addressing. We want Senator McCain to know that the lines of communication are open.”
She said discussions had been held with the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) which had apparently been fruitless as the agency is a supporter of McCain’s Bill that the Senator said was spurred into life in part by steroid contamination concerns with dietary supplements.
In the letter, Mister said CRN actually supported two of the tenets of the Bill: annual registration of dietary supplement facilities and mandatory recall authority being granted to the FDA.
In regard to steroids and other products Mister said: “These matters alarm us as well, and we believe FDA should use its existing authority to crack down on outlier companies that peddle these products. We would likewise urge you to be transparent with your Senate colleagues and your constituents about the effects of this legislation and the status of current laws governing dietary supplements.”
He concluded: “We would encourage USADA and other sports organizations to join in calling for more robust enforcement by FDA of the existing laws and regulations created by DSHEA.”
McCain’s Monday floor statement suggested his Bill had been falsely criticized by “Washington lobbyists” and that it would not challenge existing laws not restrict consumer freedom.
The bill can be found here .