The Natural Products Association (NPA) announced on November 30 a landmark milestone for its TruLabel registration program for dietary supplements. TruLabel is the first and longest-tenured, voluntary, self-regulatory program in the dietary supplement industry. TruLabel was adopted by NPA (formerly NNFA) in 1990 as a registration and random-testing program for suppliers of dietary supplements. NPA has registered more than 40,700 unique SKU products with NPA Tru Label. NPA maintains copies of all of the current registered product labels.
“NPA’s TruLabel program gives retailers and consumers the confidence to know that the supplements they purchase are accurately labeled and safe,” said Dan Fabricant, Ph.D., executive director and CEO of NPA. “The TruLabel program demonstrates maturity, responsibility and reputability within the supplement industry and to consumers, Congress and government organizations.”
On August 1, 2008, NPA’s TruLabel program was selected by NIH’s Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) and the National Library of Medicine as a subcontractor for a pilot study to determine the feasibility of developing a web-based platform to catalog labels of all dietary supplements sold in the US. That pilot study led to the development of the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD), which provides comprehensive label information in a format that is user-friendly for both consumers, researchers, industry stakeholders and regulators.
“As states attorneys general across the country continue to brand the dietary supplement industry as unsafe or unregulated, NPA’s TruLabel Program remains a testament to the transparency that exists in one of the nation’s fastest growing segments of the economy,” said Fabricant. “TruLabel has been a real asset to NPA and its members in being ahead of its time in demonstrating the transparency of the industry and the organization.”
NPA will be making the TruLabel registration database available to the industry for voluntary registration and the general public. In order to make it easier for members to voluntarily register their products, NPA is providing an online portal database in early 2016.
