Ensuring Safety and Trust For Weight-loss Supplements
Weight Management
To help ensure efficacy and safety of weight-loss ingredients, in general the suppliers may follow the rule of traceable and socially and environmentally responsible products, said Vladimir Badmaev, MD, PhD, CEO, American Medical Holdings, in New York. “The objective of a traceable nutritional product is to deliver to the end user a product that consistently meets specifications presented in certificate of analysis, he noted. “Therefore, traceability is not only about the source of the product but more importantly about vertical organization of manufacturer. Vertical includes traceable, but traceable does not necessarily come from a vertical manufacturing process. You can trace your material to a specific geographic area, but if you do not have control of the supply chain you do not have vertical manufacturing of your product. Imagine that you are an owner of large fields to grow raw material that you keep clean of use of pesticides and chemicals. The crop from your fields goes to your own storage facility with controlled temperature, humidity and hygienic conditions. Your crop from your storage facility then goes to a dedicated (preferably yours) extraction facility that uses a dedicated clean line for processing a specific product and specific batch of the product. Finally, you take the finished product to your dedicated packaging facility, which ensures the final touch on quality control. Recent problems in our industry include contamination with melamine, plasticizers and re-used cooking oil in China and Taiwan; this exemplifies that traceability of a nutritional product must involve vertical organization of manufacture.
“Sustainability is a function of a vertical organization of manufacture, because if you control your means of production you are in control of the sustainable source of your product,” Badmaev continued. “Sustainability primarily means taking care of the environment and preventing any depletion of natural resources, re-planting, and sound agricultural practices to prevent any loss of ecosystem. Think in terms ‘preserving the rain forest.’ However, smart sustainability involves steps such as planning for unpredictable weather and material spreading throughout the various geographic areas, as well as storage and manufacture. A large part of sustainability is social responsibility. Social responsibility is to some degree cares for the environment but most importantly cares for farmers, the community that supports your business, and the tradition that created your product. An interesting first-time initiative was begun by several raw materials companies in India to use natural fertilizers and natural pesticides in growing herbals on an industrial scale. The promise of “green technology” botanicals has been recently supported by the use of natural humic acid as an eco-friendly fertilizer, and use of neem cakes and neem extracted spray as both fertilizer and as a natural pesticide.”
