While all natural product companies claim to have the best quality, almost none are completing all the steps required to comprehensively ensure that quality and purity are consistently produced time after time. At Vital Nutrients, no corners are cut when it comes to quality assurance. We provide comprehensive proof and fully guarantee that our products are prepared utilizing the highest standards of manufacturing practice and laboratory quality assurance.

Vital Nutrients quarantines all purchased raw materials and independently tests for total aerobic bacterial count, yeast and mold counts, Salmonella species, E. coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus.

Vital Nutrients' raw materials are tested to verify identity and authenticity. Our quality assurance department is constantly investigating and expanding its knowledge to choose the most reputable labs and scientifically valid testing methods and reference standards.

Vital Nutrients never relies on a supplier’s potency claim. All of our raw materials are tested for potency markers by third party labs.

Vital Nutrients independently laboratory tests all raw materials for chemical solvent residue. Many vitamins, minerals, amino acids and botanical products are manufactured using one or more chemicals or chemical solvents. Currently the natural products industry has no limits on chemical or solvent residue allowed in natural products. Vital Nutrients complies with the pharmaceutical industry’s standard limits for residual chemical solvents, USP 467.

All botanical products are tested for the presence of lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. Minerals and other raw materials prone to toxic metal contamination are tested for lead.

Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites produced by certain fungi that are in or on foods and plant materials. Four different aflatoxins, B1, B2, G1 and G2, have been identified with B1 being the most toxic, carcinogenic and prevalent. Aflatoxins are probably the best known and most intensively researched fungal toxins in the world. Aflatoxins have been associated with various diseases, such as aflatoxicosis in livestock, domestic animals and humans throughout the world. Aflatoxins have received greater attention than any other fungal toxins because of their demonstrated potent carcinogenic effect in susceptible laboratory animals and their acute toxicological effects in humans. Many countries have attempted to limit exposure to aflatoxins by imposing regulatory limits on food and feed for animals. The US FDA has set a limit of less than 20ppb for total aflatoxins in food and feed. Every botanical product we buy is tested for residual amounts of aflatoxins and must meet our specification before we allow the material to be used in production.

Every batch of each botanical product is tested for residual amounts of a variety of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides. These tests include a total of 310 compounds, including organochlorines, organophosphates and organonitrogens, and pyrethroids.

All Fish Oil Products: What is “DIOXIN”? Dioxin is a generic term used to describe a family of 210 compounds. The most dangerous of this family are 17 members of this section (the ones Vital Nutrients tests for) characterized by the presence of chlorine atoms in the 2, 3, 7, and 8 positions. Each of those 2, 3, 7, 8-substituted congeners has been assigned a Toxic Equivalent Factor (TEF), which is used for the computation of the Toxic Equivalency Quotient (TEQ). This scale is used in risk assessment studies to calculate the probability of causing cancer and other life threatening diseases in humans.

PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) are a mixture of individual chemicals, which are no longer produced in the United States, but are still found in the environment. Health effects that have been associated with exposure to PCBs include acne-like skin conditions in adults and neurobehavioral and immunological changes in children. PCBs are known to cause cancer in animals. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has concluded that PCBs may reasonably be anticipated to be carcinogens. The EPA and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have determined that PCBs are probably carcinogenic to humans. Vital Nutrients minimizes Dioxin and PCB exposure with its parts per trillion assay method and very strict acceptance criteria.

All Oil Products: Our lipid softgel products are tested for primary oxidation by-products (peroxide levels) and secondary oxidation by-products (anisidine levels). A high level of either is indicative of rancidity of long chain fatty acids. It is critical to test for both as peroxides are transitory and can drop to a low level as they transform into secondary oxidation by-products (anisidines).