The “unregulated” supplement industry
Lately we’ve been noticing the (admittedly constant) trend of referring to the dietary supplement industry as “unregulated”. We’re not exactly sure where this idea comes from, because there’s a huge government agency, called the Food and Drug Administration, who oversees dietary supplements. They even have an Office of Criminal Investigation, composed of agents from the US Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and others. If you’ve never heard of those guys, Google them and you’ll see why they’re the government agency responsible for more asset seizures per man than any other. Doing the wrong thing with dietary supplements can actually be a crime, and these guys are gun toting federal agents who’ve been tasked with stopping this from happening.
We follow the appropriate rules found in Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations plus those found in the Dietary Supplement Health Eductation Act. Our manufacturing process is governed by Current Good Manufacturing Process (CGMP) procedures, and our advertising conforms to the standards put in place by the FTC with regards to dietary supplements. That makes two government agencies who overlook our little corner of the world, plus thousands of pages of regulations, all to insure that everything is the way it’s supposed to be. Did we mention that one of those agencies has their own gun-toting crew of Elliot Ness-types who throw people in jail?
We could go on and on, but we hope you’ll believe us when we say that the dietary supplement industry is highly policed and regulated. However, it’s policed and regulated by people who can’t be everywhere at once or see everything at the same time. Stuff falls through the cracks, and while they’re doing a great job, there are obviously too many manufacturing facilities, too many retail stores, raw material suppliers, and too many companies in general, to make sure everything is always 100% on the up and up. This means that the people who want to operate in the shadows of the industry and stay off the radar, often can do exactly that – for awhile anyway. These people give the industry a bad name and make it look unregulated. The shady stuff being sold as “Male Enhancement” or pseudo-hormonal supplements, are not part of the legitimate dietary supplement industry – which is why you don’t find them, online or at retail stores – you find them in an unmarked rack at a truck stop somewhere you wouldn’t be if you didn’t need gas.
Because we make it our business to know more than just the regulations of the industry we work in, we also know the people and companies in our market, and have fostered some great relationships with the good people and companies, and (as much as possible) avoid the bad ones.
We all know that there are some terrible, disreputable, companies operating in the same market as us.
However, to judge the entire industry because clowns like this are selling their products in an unregulated manner is like judging the entire automobile industry by test driving a Yugo. That’s not the legitimate industry that 3Fu3l operates in. We realize that there are some dubious companies operating in our industry, and we could cite chapter and verse in telling you exactly who they are and how they conduct themselves. But that’s not our game.
Our game is putting out the best possible product, with the highest-quality ingredients in the world, and following every rule and regulation to the letter. So while the myth persists that this industry is unregulated, we can assure you that it is not, and that we follow those regulations in every step of our manufacturing, shipping, processing, and storage process.
