A cease and desist letter has been sent to four major American big box stores saying that certain store brand herbal supplements don’t actually contain herbs.
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced on Tuesday that his office sent letters to GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreens for allegedly selling store brand herbal supplements that could not be verified to contain what was on the label. Schneiderman also said that there are contents in the supplements that are not listed on the labels as well.
“The letters, sent Monday, call for the retailers to immediately stop the sale of certain popular products, including Echinacea, Ginseng, St. John’s Wort, and others,” reads a statement from the Attorney General.
Schneiderman has requested that the companies provide detailed information relating to the production, processing and testing of herbal supplements sold at their stores, as well as quality control measures that are currently in place. There has been an ongoing investigation by the Attorney General’s Office that alleges that only 21 per cent of test results from store brand herbal supplements actually contained the plants listed on the product’s label. A startling 79 per cent come up empty for DNA related to the labeled content and Walmart had the poorest showing with just four per cent of products tested showing the actual plant listed on the label in the product.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires companies to verify that their products are safe and properly labeled for their contents, but unlike drugs, supplements do not undergo the agency's rigorous evaluation process, which scrutinizes everything about the drug—from the design of clinical trials to the severity of side effects to the conditions under which the drug is manufactured.
An expert in DNA barcoding technology, Dr. James A. Schulte II of Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., was hired by the Attorney General’s office to perform the testing. DNA barcodes are short genetic markers in an organism’s DNA and are used to identify it as belonging to a particular species. Barcodes provide an unbiased, reproducible method of species identification. Barcodes can be used to determine the exact plant species being tested.
The DNA tests were performed on three to four samples of each of the six herbal supplements purchased from the New York stores. Each sample was tested with five distinct sequence runs, meaning each sample was tested five times. Three hundred and ninety tests involving 78 samples were performed overall.
These are the herbal supplements that the state attorney general's office revealed do not consistently contain the labeled herb.
GNC: Herbal Plus:
Gingko Biloba, St. John's Wort, Ginseng, Echinacea, and Saw Palmetto
Target: Up & Up:
Gingko Biloba, St. John's Wort, Valerian Root
Walgreens: Finest Nutrition:
Gingko Biloba, St. John's Wort, Ginseng, Garlic, Echinacea
Walmart: Spring Valley:
Gingko Biloba, St. John's Wort, Ginseng, Garlic, Echinacea, and Saw Palmetto
