Helping Promote Quality in Dietary Supplements
Since 1994, dietary supplements have been explicitly regulated as a category of foods, which means that they do not require FDA approval before they are marketed. Dietary supplement manufacturers are responsible for the quality and safety of the supplements they sell to consumers.
USP has developed over 1,000 quality standards – monographs, general chapters, and reference standards - for dietary supplements and dietary ingredients, providing manufacturers and suppliers with tools and guidance to help ensure the quality of their products. These monographs and general chapters, in addition to a suite of other helpful information, can be found in USP’s Dietary Supplements Compendium, a comprehensive, definitive resource for the dietary supplement industry.
When it comes to vitamins and other dietary supplements, many consumers and healthcare practitioners look for independent oversight from a third party, preferably a fully independent organization not associated with the manufacturer and with the necessary expertise to assess quality. With a longstanding history of developing quality standards, USP is uniquely positioned to verify dietary supplements through its Dietary Supplement Verification Program, the industry’s most comprehensive auditing and testing program.
USP: The Trusted Standard for Quality
For more than 200 years, United States Pharmacopeia (USP) has protected public health by developing quality standards for medicines, dietary supplements, and foods. USP standards provide a common quality benchmark—a set of characteristics, processes, and guidelines that apply regardless of where a product or ingredient is manufactured.
Although we are not a government entity, USP standards are recognized in U.S. law, and USP works closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to develop its standards. USP standards are published in the United States Pharmacopeia, which is recognized as “official compendia” in the U.S. and used in more than 140 countries worldwide.