10.01.06
The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), Washington, D.C., and the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus , an investigative and judicial arm of the advertising industry’s self-regulatory body, have launched a new initiative that will increase monitoring of advertising for dietary supplements. The initiative has been developed to increase consumer confidence in the truth and accuracy of advertising claims for dietary supplement products and encourage fair competition within the industry. Through a series of multi-year grants from CRN, the new initiative will allow NAD to hire an additional attorney who will focus solely on this product category. The initiative is anticipated to address not only comparative advertising claims among makers of dietary supplements, but also substantive claims that are deceptive or misleading and clearly go beyond what’s supported by research and allowed by law—claims that feed the public’s distrust of the supplement industry. The dietary supplement industry is regulated by both the FTC and the FDA. The new self-regulatory initiative complements federal regulation of an industry that manufactures and markets products used by more than 150 million Americans each year. NAD reviews advertising that is national in scope, including print, broadcast, infomercials and Internet advertising. NAD opens cases following complaints from consumers, competitors and pursuant to its own monitoring. NAD has a staff of six