Suppliments Made in The USA
Collagen Supplements have become a big thing in America and sales
have been growing over the past few years. One look on a store shelf or on the
Internet and you will see a wide variety of supplements. But do you ever look
to see where the supplements are made? What difference does it make if the supplements
are made overseas? David Kramer, the plant manager of Sue Biochemical and SB-Edge a type 2 collagen supplement manufacturer discusses
why collagen supplements made in America are not only better for your health
but also supporting a wide variety of jobs in the United States.
Dave has a lot of experience in the manufacturing of dietary
supplement ingredients and has seen a lot of things and has learned a lot about
the industry and comparison to foreign produced products.
The Problem Begins
Well, when Sioux Biochemical started making chondroitin sulfate,
there was not much being made in China. But throughout the late 1990’s the Chinese
manufacturing started kicking up and they became our biggest competitor which
drove down the price of chondroitin not the price that people paid in the
store, mind you, it drove down the wholesale price, so it mainly affected the
US. manufacturers, which was us of that product.
The problem is that a lot of the chondroitin coming out of
China is considered counterfeit or adulterated. Instead of making a 90%
product, they were shipping it in at as low as 5%. They found that there was a
certain seaweed sugar that would mimic chondroitin sulfate on a lot of the
tests that were being used to analyze it. Independent labs were finding that at
best, some of this product was 50%, but there was a lot coming in that was five
and 10% and was just adulterated with other things.
These facts didn’t change how many distributors and
resellers were continuing to buy off-shore chondroitin. They liked the low
price and felt that if the foreign company had a CFA that says it was good that
was all that was needed to justify the purchase. This creates an uneven playing
field for manufacturers and a less effective product for customers.
The good news is that a lot of the counterfeit stuff was
fairly benign, so it wasn’t poisonous or anything. Now, there have been
situations with adulteration where they adulterate people adulterate it with
something that is actually harmful. But if you're buying a supplement based on
what you've heard, that says it should do X, Y and Z for your body, but essentially,
you're taking a sugar pill, it's not going to do X, Y and Z and actually hurts
the supplement industry, because it was like when it was made in the United
States, it was all under control. So that's probably one of the main important
things for the consumer to be concerned about, is that these adulterated
ingredients just don't give the effect that you might have been expecting or
might have heard about or even just nutritionally.
What Else Does Foreign Made Supplements Affect.
Most people would never support a company that mis-lead them
about a product, and today many would not support a company that treated its
labor force poorly or unfairly and would never support a company that was
causing environmental damage from their business practices but that’s exactly what
you are doing when buying supplements made in China or even Brazil.
Take for example the environmental factors of how cattle are
raised, in Brazil. Here in the United States, most of the cattle are raised in
the Midwest, upper Midwest, in feed lots and small operations. But in Brazil, a
lot of the rainforest has been cut down and burned to create cattle grazing. So,
the idea that some people just say, well, these are pasture fed cows, well,
that's true, but the pasture isn't as important If you had to burn down a
rainforest to get to it
Quality Control & Safety
The United States has very stringent regulations from
agencies. The FDA regulates anything like food and drug and supplements fall
under the FDA's purview. So that's the primary person that regulates. But if
anytime you're using a product of animal origin, like our collagen product, the
USDA regulates those animals that you use that you can utilize for your raw
material. One thing that we often don't think about too is OSHA. A lot of the
conditions which these supplements are made in foreign countries would fail an
OSHA exam in a heartbeat. So, they're unsafe working conditions as well for a
lot of people who don't have that protection. And obviously then we have OSHA
and the legal rights of a worker in the United States exceed that of many
foreign countries.
Supporting American Jobs
Many people do not realize the impact of buying products
made in the USA. When your dollars go to buy US made products , the money goes
to pay not only the workers at the manufacturing plant but to the supplier
company workers, truck drivers, lab testers and more. In fact, the supply chain
for our product will easily impact several hundred workers beyond our 7
employees.
In Summary
It is important for consumers and even supplier to take
notice of where their supplements are manufactured and realize the small
up-front savings leads to poor quality, less health benefits but also helps
support foreign countries instead of supporting all the people involved in
producing and taking American made products to market.
Dave Kramer has over 25 years’ experience in the industry
and is currently the plant manager for Sioux
Biochemical which manufacturers SB-Edge Collagen Supplement.
Website: https://sb-edge.com/
