As part of its continuing mission to promote and implement best practices for the dietary supplement industry, the United Natural Products Alliance (UNPA) will host “The UNPA Raw Materials & Supply Chain Summit,” Feb. 23-24, in Salt Lake City, UT.
 
The summit, the second of a three-part series of educational conferences focused on dietary supplement product quality initiatives and a follow-up to UNPA’s November 2015 Analytical Testing Summit, will include in-depth sessions on the following key topics:
 

• DNA testing update: applicability, reference materials and implementation
• The Food Safety Modernization Act and its impact on dietary ingredients and dietary supplements
• Information technologies to manage information flow, including track-and-trace technologies from Repositrak / Leavitt Partners; Vitature / Healthnotes; and Global Supplier Verification
• Standards, programs and initiatives, including an update on the status and rollout of GNC’s quality standards initiatives and working groups covering botanicals raw material good manufacturing practices, an industry product registry database, minimum certification standards and the establishment of minimum facilities requirements. 

 
The summit will provide attendees with the information and resources needed to implement new systems and technologies and integrated quality practices leading to product integrity and competitive fairness and a dramatic increase in competence and transparency of the dietary supplement supply chain by linking all critical components, from field and factory to consumer.
 
“This event has a razor focus on helping companies implement information technologies to manage information flow alongside elevating raw material quality,” said Loren Israelsen, UNPA president. “Product flow and information flow in the supply chain are currently two separate pipelines that, while they are flowing in parallel, are not operating in tandem. In addition to raising the bar for ingredient quality, industry best practices will bring together both the supply chain and the information management systems that supports it—a key component to provide consumers with the highest quality supplements with integrity and complete transparency.”
 
Sessions are designed to help senior executives, legal and regulatory staff, QA/QC and R&D experts, and purchasing and marketing teams at dietary supplement companies, analytical labs and raw material suppliers understand the issues and formulate strategies to respond to rapidly changing consumer perceptions and a new manufacturing and production environment.
 
Other organizations participating in the summit include: The Acheson Group, the ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Program, Ethical Naturals, Global Retailers and Manufacturers Alliance, NSF, RT Specialty, SIDI Working Group, U.S. Pharmacopeia, and many others.
 
The UNPA Raw Materials & Supply Chain Summit is sponsored by these companies in support of supply chain integrity and transparency:
 
GNC
Pharmavite
PLT Health Solutions
Novel Ingredients
Perkin Elmer
 
For program and lodging information and to register, visit www.unpa.com/events. UNPA members and attendees to the November 2015 UNPA Dietary Supplement Analytical Testing summit will receive a discount on their registration fee. See the UNPA website for details.