Companies such as Watson Inc., AOAC International and NutraScience Labs recently published informational items, offered donations and endorsements, and introduced development activities to drive the industry forward in several notable ways.
Watson Inc. published four on-demand webinars chock-full of information on different areas of nutritional formulation. The webinars, “Particle Size Adjustment for Value Added Formulation," “Selecting Nutrient Forms for Formulation of Fortified Foods, Beverages, and Dietary Supplements," “Microencapsulation Technology used in Value Added Nutrient Premix Applications and “Trituration Technology used in Value Added Nutrient Premix Applications," make up a series of webinars featuring speaker Alice Wilkinson, an expert in the field of nutritional formulation. The series will include one more webinar to be added later this spring.
Watson also donated 360,000 nutritional supplement tablets developed in the Watson R&D laboratories to address the nutritional needs of both children and adults. The tablets will be distributed in the Dominican Republic by Trinity Cares International (TCI).
In addition, Four health practitioner groups offered their endorsement and support to the ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Program, a program that provides advice about the various challenges related to adulterated herbs, botanical extracts and botanical ingredients in commerce. The supporting groups, which include the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM), the American Herbalists Guild (AHG), the Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium (IHPC), and the Irish Register of Herbalists (IRH), collectively represent hundreds of thousands of integrative health practitioners across the United States and Ireland. The ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Program is a coalition of three American nonprofit groups: the American Botanical Council (ABC), the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia (AHP), and the University of Mississippi’s National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR), with more than 140 other American and international parties supporting and cooperating with the program.
AOAC International introduced and began standards development activities for vitamin D, tea and aloe—ingredients previously identified by the dietary supplement trade as priority and ranked highest in order of need for standards and methods. With all three ingredients, AOAC is now looking to receive more industry engagement in reviewing standards for them for possible approval at AOAC’s Stakeholder Panel on Dietary Supplements (SPDS) meeting at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles on September 25, 2015.
In other recent news, NutraScience Labs’ month-long “Casual for a Cause" fundraising efforts benefiting Vitamin Angels raised a total of $1,590. Throughout the month of April, NutraScience Labs’ employees donated $5 for each day that they wore jeans and business casual attire to the office. Given its success and popularity, the firm’s executive leadership team made the decision to continue the campaign in May. A new fundraising goal has yet to be finalized, but Steve Rolfes, president of contract manufacturing, is confident that the company will raise an additional $1,600 by month’s end.