Below-par supplements typify 'buyer beware' market

Concerned with the absence of industry regulation, independent researchers set out to determine if veterinary supplements are served as advertised.

It didn't take them long to learn the bad news.

"It looks like there are horrible problems among pet supplements. It's a bad start for sure," says Tod Cooperman, MD, president of ConsumerLab.com.

Cooperman's company provides independent evaluations of human and, more recently, animal supplements. In coordination with independent laboratories, ConsumerLab.com randomly tested a handful of pet supplements, along with dozens of human products labeled to contain glucosamine and chondroitin.

While most of the human supplements tested out well, two of the animal products were found to contain no chondroitin, according to ConsumerLab.com.

When DVM Newsmagazine questioned one of the companies in question, Martingale Pharm refuted ConsumerLab.com's results. It also said its product would receive approval from ConsumerLab.com this month.

ConsumerLab.com denied the latter claim while adding that if the company modified the content in its product appropriately, they could resubmit it.

The second company in question, Gimborn Pet Specialties, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Cooperman says manufacturers are not putting in as much chondroitin as they claim or, "more likely, they're buying a cheaper raw material that probably doesn't contain as much chondroitin as is claimed by the producer of it."

ConsumerLab.com intends to pursue additional testing of pet supplements throughout 2004, starting with SAMe products for pets.

Bill Bookout, president of the National Animal Supplement Council, a nonprofit industry trade association, says independent laboratory testing, while often reliable, is not infallible. "The testing methodology used to isolate a specific ingredient is somewhat of a complicated process," he says. "Likewise the consumer needs to challenge the methodology by which the testing took place."

Testing flaws?

Bookout cites the difficulty, for example, of isolating glucosamine in a glucosamine/chondroitin product. "If you have a product that contains multiple ingredients, how do you specifically isolate the contribution from one individual ingredient?" he says.

William Obermeyer, Ph.D., ConsumerLab.com's vice president for research, says isolating an ingredient is based on the specificity of the test. "The tests we're using are very, very specific. They either derivatize or isolate them by doing chromatography," he says.

Obermeyer says the methods his company uses were derived from when they participated on a chondroitin sulfate scientific committee affiliated with USP several years ago.

While Bookout says he's not "throwing stones" at any particular testing agency or laboratory, he says such methodologies should, at least, be questioned.

As a private practitioner, Dr. Susan Wynn, of Woodstock, Ga., routinely recommends supplements for her patients. She agrees that the validation of testing procedures deserves a second look.

"Don't get me wrong; I use ConsumerLab results. But there are some issues with ConsumerLab I'm aware of that make it an imperfect system. For one thing, some of the testing standards aren't validated. Or at least there's no consensus as to whether they're the best test," Wynn says.

Wynn cites an example of a cranberry product sent to ConsumerLab by Thorne Research to "test the testing standards." Thorne Research reportedly sent in two products to be tested for proanthocyanidins antioxidant in a cranberry product. One was a berry product; the other was something colored with purple dye. According to Wynn, the product that was colored came up fine.

"Apparently it was just a color spectrophotometric test that had nothing to do with the unique molecule," she explains. "That sort of pointed out that the testing standards are really questionable."

Cooperman refutes any such test, saying, "We have not tested any cranberry products, and the story is not familiar to me at all."

Another practice of ConsumerLab.com's questioned by veterinary professionals is the approval process. "Apparently the way ConsumerLab gathers the product for testing is that they put out a call to the companies. Companies then have to pay to have their products tested," Wynn says.

Paid approval process?

"Smaller companies who can't afford to have testing done through this big testing lab won't have it tested," she adds.

ConsumerLab.com disputes this claim, saying that it randomly selects popular products off the shelf to test - companies don't pay to be part of their tests. ConsumerLab.com does separately offer a voluntary certification program, which costs around $4,000, where companies can pay to have their product tested. If it passes, they can display the company's seal of approval on their product.

Obermeyer explains: "Companies run through a process like anybody else does. If they pass, they can get certified. You're not paying to guarantee approval."

Bookout says such testing does benefit the public and veterinary community by increasing the level of awareness and holding industry accountable and responsible.

Testing is a start

"The very valuable contribution that those testing data have revealed is that it's basically a buyer beware industry," he says. "What testing serves to illuminate is that it's possible for organizations that may not be quality-focused organizations to participate in this industry. While they should not only be exposed, they should be eliminated from the industry," Bookout says.

To differentiate quality and nonquality providers, Bookout divides pet supplement providers into three categories: "responsible" member companies of NASC, nonmembers "but reputable" providers and opportunists.

Three provider categories

To be deemed "responsible," according to NASC's Web site, member companies must agree to the NASC's "Compliance Plus" program, which requires companies to implement quality and safety processes collectively defined by NASC officials.

To date, NASC's 45 members, which represent 65 percent of the industry, are providers of more than 4,000 products in the marketplace. The remaining products on shelves - of which Bookout says are countless - are left to the consumer to scrutinize.

Wendy Blount, practitioner in Nacogdoches, Texas, who regularly prescribes supplements to her patients, has devised criteria for selecting providers.

Veterinary recourse

First, she recommends products made by NASC member companies. Secondly, she defers to Consumerlab.com to evaluate test results on commercially available food supplements.

To supplement those resources, she says, "I prefer to work with companies who … can provide scientifically valid research to support their product claims. I (also) network with other veterinarians around the world who use these supplements. We discuss which products seem to work best for which patients."

Blount welcomes, even encourages, client feedback on how supplements are faring on their pets. "There is no drug or food supplement that will produce good results for every patient with a particular problem, every time. If a particular product fails to give good results time after time, then that is a red flag to us that we need to think twice before prescribing it again," she says.

When clients question

Wynn weighs in, "A lot of what we use probably doesn't work. Because there is no government regulation specifically targeted to the needs of supplement companies and consumers, the best we can do is patronize those companies that are trying to self-regulate," she says.

Meanwhile, NASC officials currently are entrenched in "promising" discussions with the American Association of Feed Control Officials as well as senior officials at FDA-CVM that could result in establishing what Bookout says would be "fair and reasonable" regulatory guidelines for all participants in the supplement industry.

Status of industry