For Release: October 28, 2003
FTC Testifies on the Marketing of Dietary Supplements
"Unfounded and exaggerated claims for dietary supplements have proliferated," said Howard Beales,
Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection. In presenting testimony
today before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Beales also noted that
the Commission 's enforcement actions have expanded as well. "Since last December, the FTC has
challenged deceptive advertising for health care products with more than $1 billion in sales, most
of that for dietary supplements," Beales said.
Beales noted that the FTC's mission is to prevent unfair competition and to protect consumers from
unfair or deceptive practices in the marketplace. As part of this mission, the FTC has a
longstanding and active program to combat fraudulent and deceptive advertising claims about the
health benefits or safety of dietary supplements. The testimony noted that the dietary supplement
industry encompasses a broad range of products, from vitamins and minerals to herbals and hormones,
and represents a substantial segment of the consumer health care market, with industry sales for
2001 estimated to be $17.7 billion.
According to the testimony, ensuring the truthfulness and accuracy of marketing for dietary
supplements is a priority of the FTC's consumer protection agenda. The FTC focuses its enforcement
priorities on products that present significant safety concerns for consumers, on advertising making
unfounded claims of treatment of serious diseases, and on large national advertising campaigns for
products for which the supporting science is nonexistent or clearly inadequate, the testimony noted.
Over the past decade, the FTC has filed more than 100 law enforcement actions challenging false or
unsubstantiated claims about the efficacy or safety of a wide variety of supplements. In the past
year, the Commission has filed or settled cases challenging claims for supplements marketed for
almost every imaginable health problem: to treat serious diseases like cancer, multiple sclerosis,
heart disease, emphysema, diabetes, and
Alzheimer's; to cause effortless, substantial and immediate weight loss; to stop snoring; and even
to increase bust size. The FTC's remedies address not just economic injury to consumers but
potential injury to health as well.
In addition, Beales highlighted the FTC's coordination with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
and noted since December 2002, the FTC and FDA have intensified their efforts through formation of a
joint enforcement task force. The two agencies have taken joint action against two large targets in
the past six months and have issued a combined total of more than 200 warning letters, cyber
letters, and e-mail advisories to various companies marketing dangerous or fraudulent health
products over the Internet, Beales said.
Beales also addressed deception in the weight-loss advertising market, an area of particular concern
to the agency. In September 2002, the FTC staff released its "Report on Weight-Loss Advertising: An
Analysis of Current Trends," which recognized the detrimental effects of obesity and addressed the
serious challenges facing law enforcement agencies in their efforts to stop deceptive advertising of
weight-loss products. The report analyzed claims for 300 advertisements disseminated during 2001,
and concluded that use of false or misleading weight-loss claims in advertising is widespread. The
analysis showed that more than half of the ads collected made claims that were almost certainly
false or at the very least likely to lack substantiation.
In light of the findings of the Weight Loss Advertising Report, the FTC held a public workshop in
November 2002, to explore both the impact of deceptive ads on the public health and new approaches
to finding the proliferation of misleading claims. A report on the results of the workshop will be
released in the next few months.
The testimony also noted that the FTC has been meeting with members of the media and other
interested parties to encourage them to weed out facially false weight-loss advertising claims. The
Commission will publish soon a brief checklist to aid media screening of weight-loss ads.
The Commission approved the testimony by a vote of 5-0.
The views expressed in the written testimony represent those of the FTC. The oral presentation and
responses to questions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission or any individual
Commissioner.
Copies of the FTC's testimony are available from the FTC's Web site at ftc.govftc.govOpen ↗ and also
from the FTC's Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.
20580. The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business
practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid
them. To file a complaint, or to get free information on any of 150 consumer topics, call toll-free,
1-877-FTC-HELP (1 877-382-4357), or use the complaint form at ftc.govftc.govOpen ↗. The FTC enters
Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel,
a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in
the U.S. and abroad.