The Natural Products Association (NPA) announced the launch of the Supplement Safety and Compliance Initiative (SSCI). This retailer-driven initiative is the first of its kind for the supplement industry and will bring together the largest and oldest association dedicated solely to the natural products industry with some of the largest consumer outlets for dietary supplements and natural products.

“This pioneering initiative sends a clear message to millions of consumers that they can have confidence in the safety and authenticity of the dietary supplements and natural products they use each and every day,” said Dan Fabricant, PhD, CEO and executive director of NPA.

SSCI brings together some of the largest retailers of natural products and supplements, including GNC, Vitamin Shoppe, Walmart and Whole Foods Market.

SSCI will set out to accomplish the following goals:

• Reduce supplement safety risks, recalls, and harms by delivering equivalence and convergence between effective supplement safety management systems.

• Develop core competencies and capacity building in supplement safety to create effective global systems.

• Drive global change through benchmarking of all standards, domestic and international.

• Provide unique stakeholder platform for collaboration, knowledge sharing and networking.

• Manage costs by eliminating redundancy in certification and improving operational efficiency.

• Increase the number of qualified auditors available to manufacturers, further increasing consumer safety.

• Address the myriad of standards available globally by allowing various schemes in the international community to benchmark their standard to one overarching standard.

• Design a tiered structure that accommodates the unique needs of small ingredient suppliers (i.e. organic, wild-crafted herbs), manufacturers and retailers.

SSCI focuses on the entire product life cycle and welcomes all scheme owners and certifying bodies to participate in future benchmarking.

For more information, visit www.npainfo.org.