I have to admit, with everything going on between state AGs and the dietary supplement industry, I felt a little late to the game on kicking off this important relationship. It was my first time meeting the General or any members of his team. With all of our “Big T” transparency efforts well known, we are still a small company with and small (but mighty) team. However, Rend from CRN (the Council of Responsible Nutrition) informed me that we were one of the first in only a handful of companies that have welcomed their state AG into their facility. I have to admit that I was surprised.

We get involved with government affairs relating to supplements whenever we can, but I sort of had this idea that other larger companies were light speed ahead of our meager efforts thus far. We have participated on several different “Days on the Hill” over the years, but we are only now starting to wonder about our potential larger role in government affairs. It seems to me that although we have fantastic trade associations that do great work on our behalf, there aren’t many dietary supplement companies that have their own government relations staff. In fact, I only know of one full time government relations person at any dietary supplement company – the fantastic and knowledgable Carolyn Sabatini at Pharmavite.

I’m interested to know what my friends from industry think about our role “on the hill”? If we were more coordinated and focused as an industry, do you think we could change the health of the nation for the better?