Washington, D.C. – In a significant victory for the nation’s largest and oldest trade association representing dietary supplement retailers, manufacturers, and distributors, last minute attempts to add controversial dietary supplement provisions to an omnibus government funding bill have fallen short. Congressional leaders followed House and Senate action earlier in the year to keep the divisive provisions out of FDA User Fee reauthorization.
“This is a big win for consumers, for innovation, and for access to the healthy products that millions of Americans rely on and turned to during the height of the pandemic. We expected that industry critics would try to use the lame duck as another backdoor opportunity to jam this through and that’s exactly what happened. But thanks to NPA’s advocacy and the tens of thousands of individuals who took part in our grassroots campaign, that effort was rejected. We are incredibly thankful to our members, our Board of Directors, and our allies in Congress who stood firm against this misguided and unnecessary approach,” said Daniel Fabricant, Ph.D. president and CEO of the Natural Products Association.
NPA staff and board of directors worked with influential members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, the chief negotiating committees for the FDA user fees, expressing significant concerns with including provisions from the Dietary Supplement Listing Act, including mandatory product listing (MPL).
In July, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), the ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee and a central negotiator in the conference proceedings, introduced a clean reauthorization of FDA User Fee Programs which jettisoned the controversial dietary supplement provisions. Senator Burr cited concerns over the Senate’s ability to pass the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Landmark Advancements (FDASLA) Act on time after certain provisions were attached to the bill in Committee. Then in August, a bipartisan group of members led by South Carolina’s Jeff Duncan and California’s Tony Cardenas wrote a letter to Congressional leadership urging mandatory product listing be kept of the final FDA user fee package.
