Legislative News: Health Retailer Sting Detailed in US. Senate

This sort of 'sting' operation has been done many times before. It's meant to tarnish health retailers and the products they sell. If the same sort of thing was done with say, conventional physicians, how would the quality of their advice stack up against that offered by retailers?

Supplements on Senate Hearing Hot Seat

The Special Senate Committee on Aging held a hearing this week on dietary supplement regulation, safety and quality control. The panel of Senators included Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and featured witnesses from the Government Accounting Office (GAO), Consumer Union (CU, publishers of Consumer Reports), Consumerlab.com and the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN).

A ton of details pertaining directly to supplement manufacturers was presented and discussed (read this, this and this for a more detailed look), but retailers were not absolved of marketing and selling allegations. At the behest of Sen. Kohl, GAO investigated areas of supplement marketing, including their sending undercover “senior consumers” into various retail locations in DC and Florida. In the hearing they reported, along with recorded examples, cases in which retail staff gave the fake consumers misleading advice—one suggested a supplement could replace prescribed meds—and using illegal claims. There was much discussion between the Senators and the witnesses about how to better educate retailers and their staff to limit these types of communications. There were no easy, magical solutions, but it appeared the consensus was for a united effort by trade organization, retail management and government to make sure retail staffers aren’t misleading consumers and/or breaking the law.

How do you train your staff on such matters, and what kind of assistance from industry and government would help you in this task?

Source: Natural Products Marketplace