Impacts of Artemis International's anti-adulteration initiative

Berry and botanical ingredient supplier Artemis International is Nutritional Outlook's 2025 Best of the Industry, Industry Supplier.

Melanie Bush, vice president of science and research, and Leslie Gallo, president of Artemis International explain the impact of the company's award-nominated initiative and collaborative investigation into elderberry adulteration in the marketplace, highlighting the importance of reputable ingredients, transparent suppliers, and consumer education.

Transcript

Sebastian Krawiec: Melanie, you mentioned earlier an anti-adulteration prevention program. This would be the American Botanical Council's botanical adulteration prevention program. I wonder if you can talk about that effort, what you've been able to accomplish, and what the marketplace looks like in terms of adulteration currently.

Melanie Bush: Sure. Well, it was actually before COVID, when we first saw adulteration of elderberry creeping into the market, both in finished products, as well as the supply chain of ingredients. I know during COVID time and thereafter is when there was a huge boom in elderberry awareness and customer demand. And so that exacerbated the issue that we already saw starting beforehand, but we were the first to raise the flag and approach ABC and mention that this was something that we all needed to look at, because especially for something with the therapeutic benefit of immune support in a time when you're coming out of a bad influenza season, and little did we know covid was right around the corner. This was going to be something that consumers would want to be able to trust and to look to assist them in their immune support. So to have adulterated ingredients out in the market, it was just going to dilute the entire elderberry industry and of course, reflect on the whole supplement industry, because you lose customer trust when something doesn't work.

So we noticed this creeping into the industry, brought it to their attention, and it spurred a desire to a full scale investigation. So we at Artemis spearheaded a collaborative investigation where there were different industry stakeholders, third party labs, different industry organizations, all working together to provide input to ABC as part of their botanical adulterants prevention program to identify how much of this adulteration problem was out there, were there any particular streams, what to look for, how to educate consumers, how to test for it. And eventually, it was actually an award nominated initiative, because it really did have an impact. It did result in a bulletin being published in the ABCs BAP program, and really, I think, helped to guide, at least B2B, customers of ours in what they can trust out in the market.