A Health Claims Lawsuit, a Supreme Court Bid, and Beyond

In this interview with Nutritional Outlook, Steve Mister, president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), discusses the origins of Sergeant Searchlight, a comic-style advocacy campaign built to support the Dietary Supplement Listing Act. Mister explains that the character emerged after 6 years of policy work on a mandatory registry, including a dozen published articles and a journal piece he authored roughly 4 years ago outlining how a registry would give the FDA greater visibility into the supplement marketplace.

With 2 bills now introduced in Congress, one in the House and one in the Senate, Mister says the campaign was designed to cut through opposition arguments—that a registry would be unworkable or unnecessarily burdensome—with a more approachable, lighthearted tone aimed primarily at congressional staff ahead of CRN's recent Day on the Hill.

Mister also addresses why a mandatory registry is needed despite the existence of voluntary databases already used by many manufacturers. He contrasts CRN's own Supplement OWL, which is controlled by brand owners, with the Dietary Supplement Label Database run by the National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements, which he says is populated in part by contractor web-scraping and does not reliably remove discontinued products.

Under a mandatory system, Mister explains, brand owners would be responsible for submitting and updating their own listings, including removing products no longer on the market. He frames the registry less as a burden than as a baseline credibility marker, arguing that after 21 years at CRN, companies have consistently asked for a reliable way to distinguish compliant manufacturers from bad actors, and that willingness to register with FDA is, in his words, close to the minimum requirement for operating in the industry.

A transcript of their conversation can be found below.

Nicholas Saraceno: As you know, there's a new lawsuit surfacing, the Alliance for Natural Health USA et al. v. United States Department of Health and Human Services. It's challenging the FDA's position that the "authoritative statement" pathway for health claims applies only to the conventional foods and not dietary supplements, which is a distinction that touches upon the broader concept of drug preclusion. I'm wondering what you and CRN can share in terms of the FDA's longstanding food-only interpretation, and how you kind of see that reshaping claims that your members companies make? What can you comment on what's going on there?

Steve Mister: Well, so Nick, I want to be respectful of somebody else's litigation, and, not get too deep into the weeds there. But we certainly support what the Alliance for Natural Health is doing here. The idea of authoritative statements, being able to generate health claims, was never intended to be solely about conventional foods. There's so much research out there now around these nutrients when they show up in supplements, and the benefits that they have for even disease prevention. We think that ANH is onto something. We're excited to see where this goes.

We have our own litigation right now. We’re up at the Supreme Court trying to get the Supreme Court to take a look at our case that is challenging the age restrictions in New York. We believe that's a blatant violation of the First Amendment. It infringes on commercial speech. We are pushing our own litigation. We know how expensive and how demanding it is for resources. I will leave it at that and say we just have the greatest respect for ANH for doing this.

Saraceno: Fair enough. And I was speaking to your colleague Megan Olsen, I believe it was at SupplySide Connect in in New Jersey a couple of months ago, and she started to allude to the situation in New York that you're talking about, the age restrictions.

Obviously, your organization does so much through your advocacy, your testimony. I'm wondering—as your organization is experimenting with Sergeant Searchlight, which is more unconventional in terms of a communication strategy—how do you balance that approach with maintaining the kind of seriousness regulators and legislators expect from a trade association on policy issues this consequential?

Mister: I think that's a testament to CRN's communications team, so I give great shout out to JD Ventura, who's running our communications program. It's always a balance. I think back on some of the other programs that we have done. Ten years ago, we did, uh, "Life...supplemented," which was a very serious campaign around trying to promote consumer usage of supplements and demonstrate that many, many health care professionals were using these products, even if they weren't talking about it with their patients. And there were lighthearted moments in that. We had a survey that consumers could take, and one of the options was you could be labeled a "Wanna be Well," and, you know, that was kind of fun, but it also was a very serious message.

We have other things going on now with our Vitamin & Mineral Safety Handbook that are very research intensive, doing literature reviews of, what is the safety of these ingredients. But at the same time, I think it's important that, as tan industry, we can laugh a little too and remind ourselves that some of these concepts are very simple.

It’s like Sergeant Searchlight shining the light on the corners of the industry. I mean, that can just be a fun, comical way to address what is otherwise a serious issue. As you say, we look at that and try to have a little good-natured fun, but never lose the gravitas that underlies these issues.

Saraceno: I think the industry appreciates that. I was curious too, when I was going through this, I was wondering what the psyche is of Sergeant Searchlight. What’s his actual voice like? Is he a Steve Mister mesh with somebody else? Is he one of those guys from like the movie trailers that goes, “in a world far, far away”? How do you perceive him as?

Mister: Well, he's not quite as jacked as I am, so he’s certainly not based on me. He was not based on anyone in particular. We wanted just to just create kind of a superhero character, and we knew that he had to be armed with a light, because that has been our message around the registry.

Before we even came up with Sergeant Searchlight, it was the registry that provides a light on the industry. It shines a light in the corners of the industry that are maybe hiding from public view. It recognizes all of the good members of the industry that are standing in the light, and trying to be transparent with their consumers.

That was really the basis for Sergeant Searchlight. I don't know that he has a voice, I don't know what he sounds like.

Saraceno: Fair enough. I feel like everybody can kind of form their own interpretations and use their own imagination.

Mister: We'll find out when we get to the 2.0 version of Sergeant Searchlight, and he's starting to do videos or something.

Saraceno: That would be cool. Yeah. With AI being so prominent nowadays, perhaps you can leverage that. But thanks for taking the time today, Steve. Really appreciate you breaking it down for us and the listeners. It's been a real pleasure.

Mister: Real pleasure to be here. Thank you.