Leading dietary supplement trade association makes strides in developing product registry.

• As previously covered, a leading dietary supplement trade association — the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) — has been pursuing the goal of creating a Voluntary Product Registry for Dietary Supplements.  According to CRN, the goal of the registry is to increase transparency and give regulators greater access to information about the composition of supplement products currently on the market.

• At a recent conference, CRN announced that it had retained the global science safety firm, UL, to develop and administer the product registry.  The current plan is to implement a two-tiered database.  Tier one will permit companies to add basic information about their products at no cost, and the information will be accessible to any interested party.  Tier two will provide companies with a fee-based opportunity to add more detail about their products, and access will be restricted to specific audiences (e.g., regulatory authorities, retailers).

• CRN anticipates that the registry will be operational by the end of 2016, and member companies will be required as a condition of membership to input all their product labels into the registry by July 2017.