How NOW Foods' testing program is shaping the online supplement landscape

Jim Emme, CEO of NOW Health Group and and chairman for the Natural Products Association (NPA), was awarded Nutritional Outlook's 2025 Best of the Industry award for Industry Leader.

In the third part of this interview, Emme shares how NOW Foods' testing program highlights issues with product authenticity and quality control with supplements available online, particularly on Amazon. The company shares test results with the FDA, FTC, and Amazon, often leading to contract manufacturers improving their practices. NOW Foods' efforts have garnered attention from regulatory bodies and Capitol Hill, Emme explains, and they plan to continue their testing program to combat bad actors in the market.

Transcript

Sebastian Krawiec: Well, you mentioned education part of what you guys do, obviously, and that we've recognized NOW Foods in the past, for is its testing program, right? And you shedding light on the poor quality control, product authenticity, particularly online and on Amazon. I wonder if you can talk about how this program has progressed and whether it has led to any tangible results in terms of Amazon product policies or FDA enforcement action.

Jim Emme: Well, it's really nice weather here in Chicago today. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, we have made some progress on it. We're big with Amazon. Certainly they're not our biggest customer, and they're a significant part of our business, but we're not married to them by any means, but we're big enough that we have continued that whenever we do a testing program. We just released results of St. John's wort the last few days, and we release it to the trades through our marketing team, but we also share the results with the FDA and FTC. We also share them with Amazon first. And it's interesting, this time we had a reputable contract manufacturer contact us, contacted me. I've known him for quite a while, and he said, “Hey, wait a minute, one of the products I make is on this list.” So okay, we'll help you. Well, he needs to get a new contract lab is what he needs. And you know what if we can help people like that, and we've probably had a dozen stories like that through the years of testing that we've done since 2017, 2018.

But when we send it to Amazon, sometimes they acknowledge they get it, sometimes they don't. The FDA made it clear a year and a half ago, and I think the world of Cara Welch, I think she's got a tough job. I think she's an honorable person, but they've made it clear that they believe this is a business competition issue, not a safety issue. And DSHEA it states you've got to make label claims, so there is a violation of law in there. So we're kind of, I wouldn't say we've reached the definition of insanity with the agency on this, but we need to switch things up a little bit, and we're going to go down a different path here soon, but we have gotten Amazon's attention.