Senator Durbin Is At It Again (UPDATE)

Thousands of members of the natural health community called and wrote Senate offices between Wednesday and Thursday, calling on their senators to oppose an anti-supplement amendment, Amendment No. 2127, from Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) that would have ridden the coattails of the FDA Safety and Innovation Act (S. 3187), also known as the FDA User Fee bill (S.3187). Durbin lost. We won.

His amendment that was defeated yesterday afternoon would have created a new law that would have circumvented or ignored: the guidelines outlined even in the fatally flawed NDI Draft Guidance; the facility registration rules already in place under the Bioterrorism Act of 2001; and the over 35,000 product labels already on file with the FDA and the US National Library of Medicine.

The failed amendment would have been a product registration nightmare creating burdensome and unnecessary registration of all safe dietary supplements, moving supplement labeling submission requirements that much closer to drug-like regulations that we see in Canada and Europe today.

Tens of thousands of products would have had to be removed from store shelves in order to be made compliant with new, completely unwarranted 30-day post-market product and label registration requirements.

This legislation was defeated via a motion to table the amendment by supplements champion Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Our victory yesterday reminds us of how important our health freedoms are, and how extra-vigilant we need to be every day.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!