US Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin has introduced the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2024, which requires the dietary supplement manufacturers to list their products with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In 1994, the US Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which allowed the US FDA to regulate dietary supplements.
However, DSHEA did not mandate companies producing dietary supplements to register their products with the FDA, which lacks the information to supervise the market.
According to the FDA estimates, only 4,000 dietary supplements were marketed in the US in 1994, which increased to over 100,000 such products on the market currently.
Durbin said: “FDA, and consumers, should know what dietary supplements are on the market and what ingredients are included in them. This is FDA’s most basic function, and the first step to protecting consumers.
“There are more than one hundred thousand products on the market, but we don’t know critical information about most of them. Americans deserve a transparent supplement market, and it’s past time that we deliver it for them.”
The Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2024 would require companies to provide critical information about their products to the FDA.
The information includes product names, a list of all ingredients, an electronic copy of the label, allergen statements, and health and structure/function claims, among others.
The US FDA would make the information publicly available through an electronic database.
Durbin’s Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2024 follows the introduction of the Prohibiting Tianeptine and Other Dangerous Products Act, in April this year.
Tianeptine is an unapproved drug that is marketed as a purported dietary supplement and sold under labels such as Neptune’s Fix.
Ingestion of the drug resulted in a nationwide increase in calls to poison control centres and severe adverse effects requiring visits to emergency rooms.
According to America’s Poison Control Centers report, 391 tianeptine cases were reported across the US, last year.
