My outreach to Sen McCain

Sen. John McCain's recent bill would gut DSHEA, put huge burdens on supplement marketers and retailers, and still not accomplish what the bill's purpose is said to be. I am going to Washington March 23 and hope to meet with him, or to meet with him here in Arizona with my local colleagues. If you want to go to Washington for this annual day on Capitol Hill and join me and more than 100 of your colleagues, click here for more info. Here is the note that I sent to Sen. McCain today:

Dear Senator McCain,

I am writing about your "Dietary Supplement Safety Act". I have lived in Arizona since 1973 and worked in the supplement industry since 1990. My company is in downtown Phoenix and we produce magazines, trade shows and conferences for the supplement industry. At our conference last week in Scottsdale, we had USADA's Travis Tygart as one of our speakers.

I am very knowledgeable about the way supplements are regulated, the failure of FDA to enforce the law, and the reasons why your bill may be well intended but will actually spell disaster for the many small businesses in Arizona and nationwide in the legitimate supplement industry. I will be in your Washington office on March 23 as part of the annual Natural Products Day organized by the Natural Products Association, and I would really like to meet with you. I come out every year, and I have always been treated very well by your staff members.

Arizona has a large number of supplement manufacturers and retailers, including Hi Health (50+ stores), Arizona Health Foods, Sprouts, Arizona Nutritional Supplements (one of the largest and best manufacturers with a 200,000 sq foot facility in Chandler), OneBode (new supplement company partially owned by Phoenix Sun Steve Nash), Olympian Labs, Naturally Vitamins, 21st Century Healthcare, etc. There are literally thousands of people employed in this industry in Arizona, and one of the nation's top accredited naturopathic medical schools (Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine) is in Tempe.

You will find that we also want the illegitimate, unsafe companies and products to go away. This message was clearly delivered to Mr. Tygart by the dozens of industry CEOs and execs at the meeting last week. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you. If you will not be available when I am at your DC office on March 23, I am happy to meet when you are in Arizona during any recess or break. I would also be happy to arrange a meeting with a group of company owners and employees from the legitimate supplement industry here in Phoenix at any time. I think you will find that we agree that companies selling bad product must be dealt with, it's just that we have other ideas about how that should be done. Thanks for your time and consideration.

Best regards,

Jon Benninger Virgo Publishing LLC, 3300 N Central Ave #300 Phoenix, AZ 85012    602-421-6079