Exceeding the FDA Standards

Vital Nutrients is widely known in the professional supplement industry as The Leader in Quality Assurance. We don’t simply meet the quality standards set forth by the FDA, NPA, or the quality programs set up by various distributors. We take whatever measures are necessary to ensure true purity, efficacy, and consistency in our supplements. Here are just a few of the ways that we exceed the FDA standards.

We Never Rely on a Certificate of Analysis

We never trust a supplier’s certificate of analysis. We always require U.S. third party test results as proof. For instance, we test for a full range of 51 residual solvents on every raw materials, even when the certificate of analysis states that only a single solvent, such as ethanol, was used in the extraction process.

No Skip Lot Testing

At Vital Nutrients we test every lot of raw material and finished product for identity, potency, and a full range of contaminants. Since we have seen quality issues in isolated lots from our most trusted suppliers, we know that the skip lot testing practices employed by our manufacturers and accepted by the FDA are not infallible. At Vital Nutrients we never test on a “once a year,” “biannual,” or “as needed” basis.

Aflatoxins Testing on All Herbal Materials

While the FDA does not require aflatoxins testing, Vital Nutrients tests every batch of each botanical for aflatoxins at a USDA lab. Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites that have demonstrated a potent carcinogenic effect in susceptible laboratory animals and acute toxicological effects in humans. Most companies do not test for aflatoxins and a few companies only test materials documented to have especially high susceptibility to aflatoxin contamination. We have found that any plant material may have unacceptable levels and have returned several lots of material contaminated by aflatoxins to our vendors.

Testing for Herbicide & Pesticide Residue on All Herbal Raw Materials

Although testing for herbicide & pesticide residue is not required by the FDA, or any other certification agency or quality program, we test every batch of every herbal raw material for a panel of 159 herbicide & pesticide residues.

Product Specific Tests

We never assume that our typical testing protocol (authenticity, potency, heavy metals, solvent residue, herbicide, pesticide, and fungicide residue, aflatoxins, stability and bacteria, yeast and mold counts) is sufficient. We research every new raw material and finished product to determine whether any additional risks of adulteration, contamination, or degradation are present. If a raw material has extra vulnerabilities, we require additional third party testing and document on the need for additional testing on the customized specification.

Finished Product Expiration Date & Stability-Testing Program

We are the first professional supplement manufacturer to put into place a finished product expiration date and stability-testing program. This program provides us with independent laboratory test data points to guarantee that our products meet 100% of label claim and validates our published expiration date, with several data points as confirmation. The FDA does not require a stability program and most other supplement manufacturers do not do this amount of rigorous testing and data collection to evaluate their product stability. Vital Nutrients uses manufactured dates on new products until we have sufficient data to truly support a published expiration date. However, from our experience and testing, products with manufactured dates may be good for at least twelve months.