McCain Withdraws Support for Dietary Supplement Safety Act

Posted By elissa on Mar 6, 2010 | 1 comment

I’m in throes of wrapping up a major project, so – while I was aware of the Dietary Supplement Safety Act (natch!) – I missed blogging about it (I wanted to read the text first, but couldn’t spare the time).

But it looks like Senator McCain just made this a moot point.

A Senate staffer confirmed that Sen. John McCain no longer supports a bill he introduced to significantly tighten regulatory requirements for dietary supplements.

McCain offered the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010, S. 3002, in February. The Arizona Republican will now collaborate with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on revised legislation that allegedly provides for transparency and safety within the supplement industry but without the intensive regulatory intervention proposed in S. 3002. No timeline is set for introduction of a new bill.

Hatch thanks McCain for withdrawing his support of the original legislation in a March 4 letter.

“I’m counting on you to work with me to make sure this important industry does not fall prey to over-regulatory regimes and mounds of costly government bureaucracy,” Hatch writes.

Works for me. Personally, I don’t see anything majorly wrong with the existing regulatory framework.  As I see it, the primary problem is lax/uneven enforcement – a problem that would not be solved by giving the FDA even more power over the industry.