A group of 14 attorneys general want Congress to clamp down on the herbal supplement industry, citing concerns about the safety and marketing of the products.
The effort was announced Thursday in a letter spearheaded by the attorneys general of New York and Indiana, which want Congress to launch a comprehensive inquiry into herbal supplements.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said he tested supplements from Target, Walgreens, Walmart and GNC and found they didn’t contain the labeled ingredients. The companies voluntarily pulled supplements from state shelves after getting a subpoena.
Schneiderman said that testing of products found supplements contained allergens, off-label plants and other potentially dangerous products. “Other research has suggested that some herbal supplements have been found to contain high levels of heavy metals like lead, mercury and arsenic,” Schneiderman said in a statement.
GNC reached an agreement with Schneiderman’s office last week that its products could return to shelves and the the company will boost identity testing.
The supplement industry is pushing back against the push for a federal inquiry. “Concerns raised in the letter about alleged widespread safety issues are not true,” according to the industry group Council for Responsible Nutrition.
Supplements have murky oversight from the Food and Drug Administration.
Supplement makers must meet FDA quality and labeling standards. However the FDA doesn’t approve each supplement before it goes to market, as the agency does with regular drugs.
It has been nearly two decades since Congress intervened in the multi-billion dollar industry. The last time Congress passed legislation surrounding supplement regulation was in 1994.
Joining Indiana and New York are attorneys general from Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Northern Mariana Islands and Rhode Island.
