Senator reintroduces bill that threatens to destroy dietary supplement market

(http://www.anh-usa.org/new-legislation-threatens-supplements/) Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has introduced a piece of legislation identical to the last disastrous one, the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act.

Senator Durbin says that the bill is designed to stop companies from "mislabeling products and making health claims that have no scientific basis" and "marketing supplements with impure or incorrectly identified ingredients." The funny thing is, is that these things are already against the law to do. In fact, nearly all of the provisions introduced in the bill are part of existing law. The few parts of the bill that aren't currently covered by the law are so vague that the FDA could interpret them any way they want.

The bill would require the FDA and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to compile a list of dietary supplement ingredients that could possibly lead to adverse effects on health or are otherwise deemed risky, at the FDA's discretion. Based off of their apparent preference to pharmaceutical drugs and downplaying of dietary supplements and the health benefits associated with good nutrition, the FDA and IOM hardly seem like reliable sources of information on the safety of these substances.

The bill makes no attempt to clearly define the powers granted to the FDA and includes no process to challenge their arbitrary determinations. If passed, it would give the FDA overwhelming power to add whatever substance it wants to the "bad list," ban it from use, and control what is available to consumers, thus controlling what they "choose" to put into their bodies. This bill is another step to a full FDA pre-approval system for supplements. Many supplement producers would not be able to afford the immense FDA approval costs (the average new drug costs $1 billion to get approved), consequently, most health foods and supplements would either become very expensive or no longer be marketed at all.