Welcome to our monthly digest of litigation and regulatory highlights impacting the personal care product and dietary supplement industry. April saw a re-emphasis on restriction of COVID-related claims in advertisements for supplements and therapies, developments in various class action cases, including a win for consumers challenging hand sanitizer’s claims of killing 99.99% of germs and
FTC Files First Case Seeking Civil Penalties For Allegedly Deceptive COVID-19 Advertising
The FTC flexed its new-found civil penalty muscle last week by filing the first case pursuant to the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act, which gives the FTC authority to seek civil penalties for deceptive COVID-related acts and practices. ICYMI, see our blog post about the civil penalty authority here.
Ordinarily, the FTC is only authorized to
Food Industry Regulatory and Litigation Highlights – March 2021
Welcome to our selected regulatory and litigation highlights impacting the food and beverage industry in March 2021. The food court saw its own brand of March Madness with disputes over food delivery fees kicking off this month’s update.
Litigation Developments
Hidden Delivery Fees
A number of suits were filed in March regarding undisclosed delivery fees.
Dietary Supplement and Personal Care Product Regulatory and Litigation Highlights – March 2021
Welcome to our curated selection of highlights of regulatory and litigation developments in the dietary supplement and personal care product industries for March 2021. In case you were wondering what pain relief, teeth whitening, and CBD have in common (and, who wasn’t?) it seems that one year into the pandemic, these are the advertising battles
FDA Is Still Keeping Up With The Kardashians
When it comes to the legal side of working with influencers, smart companies focus on ensuring that influencers clearly disclose that they are working with the company. After all, that’s where regulators have focused most of their attention in recent years. But that’s not where a company’s obligations stop – companies also need to take
Food Litigation and Regulatory Highlights – February 2021
Welcome to our monthly digest of litigation and regulatory highlights impacting the food and beverage industry. February saw another win for industry on the vanilla front, a preemption win in California state court, and FDA continuing with COVID-19-related warning letters and foreign supplier verification enforcement. Let’s take a look….
Litigation
Industry scored another win on
Dietary Supplement and Personal Care Products Regulatory Highlights – February 2021
Welcome to our monthly roundup of regulatory and litigation highlights impacting the dietary supplement and personal care products industries. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the read. February was a short month, with a lot going on.
Health claim substantiation was front and center before NAD in a monitoring case involving Pendulum Therapeutics and a “medical probiotic” product featuring claims such as “The only medical probiotic clinically shown to lower A1C & blood glucose spikes for the dietary management of T2D*” (*Consult your physician as part of your total diabetes management plan. Results may vary from person to person.”)
The advertiser submitted a 12-week multi-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study (the “Perraudeau Study”) to assess Pendulum Glucose Control’s safety and effectiveness in improving glycemic control in Type 2 diabetics and, ultimately, their dietary management of the disease – specifically, the role of certain probiotic strains found in prior research to be associated with the promotion of a healthy gut microbiome through the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs).
The advertiser also provided clinical studies and research articles demonstrating the roles of A1C, fasting glucose and postprandial glucose levels in managing Type 2 diabetes. The advertiser also referred to the FDA’s Guidance document (Diabetes Mellitus: Developing Drugs and Therapeutic Biologics for Treatment and Prevention) to demonstrate what level of reduction in HbA1c was clinically meaningful.
While NAD expressed some concerns about the evidence, ultimately, NAD determined that the Perraudeau Study was a good fit for the challenged claim “The only medical probiotic clinically shown to lower A1C & blood glucose spikes for the dietary management of T2D*” (*Consult your physician as part of your total diabetes management plan. Results may vary from person to person.”) but recommended the following modifications: (1) limiting the claim to individuals who are taking metformin; (2) modifying the claim to clarify that the product can be used as part of the dietary management of type 2 diabetes; and (3) removing the references to percent reductions in blood glucose spikes in the absence of evidence in the record demonstrating that the reductions were clinically relevant.
This decision is a helpful discussion of the competent and reliable scientific evidence standard. Anyone seeking to understand health claims substantiation better should check it out.
Continue Reading Dietary Supplement and Personal Care Products Regulatory Highlights – February 2021
Food Litigation and Regulatory Highlights – January 2021
Welcome to our monthly digest of litigation and regulatory highlights impacting the food and beverage industry. As it has been for many months, the story was mostly about what’s going on in the food court. Let’s take a look….
Vanilla, vanilla, and more vanilla….The plaintiff’s bar remains skeptical of any product labeled as vanilla.
Dietary Supplement and Personal Care Products Regulatory Highlights – January 2021
Welcome to our monthly roundup of regulatory and litigation highlights impacting the dietary supplement and personal care products industries.
NAD tackled substantiation for “#1 Dermatologist Recommended” claims in a challenge involving L’Oreal’s CeraVe moisturizer and use of syndicated survey data to support related claims.
Health claim substantiation was front and center in
You Can Hide Your Covid-Brows, But Don’t Hide Covid Fees
Two articles from the weekend perusal of the Washington Post are worthy of mention here. First, it seems that pandemic eyebrows are driving us all crazy. I don’t have an answer for that problem other than to acknowledge that the struggle is real and none of us stands alone.
Pandemic