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AOAC INTERNATIONAL NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: March 23, 2015
Industry Stakeholders Develop Internationally Accepted Supplement Standards: AOAC Mid-Year
Meeting, March 2015
Story Contact
: Bob Rathbone
, rrathbone@aoac.org ,301-924-7077 ext 105
Rockville, MD -- On March 16-20, 2015, as part of the 5th Annual AOAC INTERNATIONAL Mid-Year Meeting, AOAC and
industry stakeholders will lead an effort to establish voluntary consensus standards for high-priority ingredients, with the goal of
Official Methods
SM
. Under AOAC’s latest 5-year contract with the National Institutes of Health/Office of Dietary Supplements,
the initiative is expected to result in standard method performance requirements (SMPRs) for 25 priority dietary supplement
ingredients that reflect the needs of the dietary supplements community. Key to the project is industry engagement and
participation to help ensure that efforts are up to date and relevant.
From stakeholder panels and working groups to expert review panel (ERP) activities, the AOAC stakeholder process has resulted
in significant progress in new standards and modern methods for the analytical sciences communities. Some potential
outcomes
of the 2015 AOAC Mid-Year Meeting for dietary supplments include:
* Approval of SMPRs for
Mitragyna speciosa
(kratom), Folin C, cinnamon, and ashwagandha
* Development of draft SMPRs for
vitamin D, tea, and aloe
“This is an exciting project, analytically and from the standpoint of societal, industrial, and governmental need,” said AOAC
Executive Director
James Bradford
. “AOAC’s previous work in the dietary supplements area has resulted in an impressive list
of methods adopted, botanical identification guidelines, including a statistical model for the validation of qualitative botanical
identification methods, and standards for anthocyanins, chondroitin, and PDE5 inhibitors, among others. Sound, science-based
solutions can help level the playing field for the dietary supplements industry’s problem of inferior products and the need for
standardized testing methodology.”
The analysis of complex dietary supplements poses many challenges. For example, dietary supplements are often mixtures of
large numbers of compounds. Further, compounds of dietary supplements are often unstable, making extraction difficult and
posing reference material challenges. Methods are needed with analytical ranges appropriate to everything from raw materials to
finished products. There is a lack of uniform industry test standards necessary to help resolve the safety, quality, and regulatory
issues that follow as a result.
In response, through its standards development process, AOAC engages the dietary supplements industry to develop voluntary
consensus standards in an effort to standardize and modernize methods. AOAC leverages networks and dietary supplements
stakeholders for industry outreach and engagement. AOAC encourages industry to participate to help drive and move the effort
forward and ensure that the work is relevant.
The overall objectives of the contract are to provide ODS with “a stakeholder-informed master list of dietary supplement
ingredients/finished products for which scientifically valid methods are lacking; to use a formal process to set stakeholder-
informed priorities for the order in which method needs identified in the master list will be addressed; and to provide consensus
driven expert guidance in selecting individual high-priority methods to become candidate methods for future validation studies.”
The AOAC Process
An advisory panel, comprised of key experts and stakeholders from industry, government, and academia, identifies and
prioritizes 25 dietary supplement ingredients/finished products for which systematically reviewed analytical methods are needed.
A stakeholder panel, through smaller, topic-specific working groups, develops fitness-for-purpose statements, clearly stating the
intended use of the methods. Working groups examine analytical issues and needs and develop draft SMPRs for the priority