I still get angry when I think about it. It was 2005 and I had just accepted the offer to come work at the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN). I kept seeing these infomercials on cable TV that were promising to cure arthritis and treat cancer. I thought, at the time, that the industry should do something about that. Claiming to cure diseases with dietary supplements is clearly illegal … and likely untrue. Who’s looking out for the consumer, here? Why doesn’t the industry I’m about to go work for do something to call out these hucksters?

Lucky for me, the CRN Board was having that same conversation, and within two years, CRN created a new partnership with the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus to do just that. The result: a program supported by grants from CRN’s Foundation that targeted fraudulent and misleading ads with the industry holding itself accountable. Since then the NAD has reviewed more than 250 advertisements and issued formal opinions about whether those ads misled consumers and had sufficient evidence to support the claims they made for these products.

As a result of this program, many advertisers have withdrawn claims that were just too good to be true; others have modified their advertising based on the recommendations of the NAD decisions; and a few have ignored the NAD’s request to provide support for their claims and found themselves in an FTC investigation instead.

A Lasting Model
But the reasons this CRN-NAD joint program matters to the industry go beyond the 250 cases themselves. I think this initiative, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, is important for the example it sets of self-policing, the role industry members have in reining in rogue players, and the model it now sets for other self-regulatory efforts the dietary supplement industry critically needs.

The NAD program calls on companies to challenge their competitors when they see advertising they know exceeds the available science for the products involved. It calls on companies when they are challenged to step up and put their substantiation files on the table for an independent evaluator to review and answer the simple question: Do you have sufficient evidence to support the statements you make to consumers about your products? It’s never easy to “call out” your competition—and admittedly, those who do sometimes worry about retaliation—but they also take the extra step to be sure they have their own house in order. It takes courage.

But that kind of courage is what helps an industry to mature and move past the characterizations that it is an unregulated “wild west.” Consumers want to know they can trust what they hear on radio and TV and see in a magazine or on a website. Companies that are willing to challenge each other illustrate that they want consumers to rightly have confidence in their products and in the supplement industry overall. They show the skeptics that the long-term health of the industry matters most, and they are invested for the sake of their customers.

Regulatory Assurance
The program matters to our regulators too. FTC has praised the CRN-NAD program on several occasions, most recently advising: “The CRN/NAD initiative shows just how impactful meaningful self-regulation can be.” Self-regulatory programs such as this one complement the government’s work, and help to fill in where government resources are stretched thin, adding an extra layer of watchdog vigilance.

Members of Congress have taken notice of the program over the years as well; it has served to assure these legislators that industry is critically monitoring advertising so additional legal burdens don’t need to be imposed. Even several state attorneys general who have been briefed on the NAD’s activities say they are assured that further state intervention into supplement advertising may not be necessary in light of self-policing by the industry itself.

Another advantage of the program is for the industry itself. All 255 NAD decisions to date have produced written decisions that serve as precedent for others to evaluate and heed. When the program repeatedly cautions advertisers against saying “clinically proven” unless there really is proof, it serves as a caution on the use of that language. When the NAD provides detailed interpretations of the FTC’s standards for what constitutes meaningful weight loss, other weight management supplement manufacturers and marketers can learn how far they should push the envelope with their own advertising. And CRN has catalogued all those decisions into an online database that makes it easy to search, sort and study the 10 years of precedential decisions.

Transparency & Accountability
More recently, the dietary supplement industry has begun a long overdue introspection and attention to improve the quality of ingredients and finished products and to enhance the transparency and accountability of the industry. The new industry-wide product registry that CRN is developing, the uniform quality standards being fashioned by the Global Retailer and Manufacturers’ Alliance (GRMA), and the botanical ingredient guidelines spearheaded by the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) all depend on the credibility and track record of earlier self-policing programs for their acceptance and viability.

The CRN-NAD advertising program demonstrates this is an industry that can rein in egregious conduct. It’s been doing just that for 10 years. Maybe that’s the program’s most important legacy.