Truth in Labeling Goes for Vitamins, Too : <i> Washington mustn’t give in to food supplement industry</i>

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is no stranger to controversy. Its decision to restrict access to silicone breast implants last year pending safety review won it bitter enemies as well as friends. The agency’s dogged pursuit of more accurate food labeling rules has angered major food processors. And its participation in a multi-agency effort to improve pesticide safety has generated resentment among the chemical manufacturers and big agriculture. Now the FDA has angered some makers and distributors of vitamins, minerals and other dietary supplements.

Every year Americans swallow vitamins, herb products and other food supplements that cost them an estimated $4 billion. Some purveyors of these products, sold mostly in health food stores, claim their pills and powders work wonders--bolster the immune system, induce weight loss, fight heart disease, even cure cancer.

Yet unlike for drugs or food, the safety, nutritional content and health claims of dietary supplements are barely regulated. Congress first directed the FDA to draft regulations for health claims on supplement labels as part of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990.

But heavy industry pressure prompted Congress to place a one-year moratorium on the section of the 1990 act that applied to dietary supplements. Last June, the FDA issued its draft rule on nutrient labeling and content. That rule could become final at the end of this year when the moratorium expires.

The agency’s proposal is eminently sound: It would require the labels on dietary supplements--vitamins and minerals, for example--to carry accurate nutritional information. As for the health claims made on the labels, the FDA would permit them only if it determined that “significant scientific agreement among qualified experts” exists that such claims are “scientifically valid.” This is the same standard that Congress mandated for health claims on labels of processed foods. The FDA correctly argues that no lesser standard should apply to supplement labels. Why, for example, should a cereal maker be held to a stricter standard for label claims for vitamins in the cereal than is the distributor of the vitamin itself?

Yet this is precisely what some supplement folks seem to want. In its effort to defeat the agency this time, the industry is contending that the FDA rule restricts the access of consumers to these supplements and restricts the free speech rights of the manufacturers. Neither is the case.

The FDA labeling rule applies only to what product makers can say on the product label or in sales materials. Supplement makers can continue to sell all manner of herbs and vitamins. They just can’t claim, on the label or in ads, that the product will reduce stress or improve hair growth, for example, unless that claim meets the FDA’s new test--the same test the agency imposes on processed foods.

Nor is the agency restricting the ability of scientists to continue their promising research documenting the very real benefits--and risks--of some supplements.

The supplement industry may yet be successful in forcing another legislative showdown in Congress on this issue. If so, we hope Congress has the good sense to realize that the FDA’s first obligation is to protect the health of Americans, not that of the vitamin and mineral industry.