MAHA is about freedom, choice, innovation and personal responsibility—not federal micromanagement. That promise is precisely why Senator Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) mandatory product listing (MPL) proposal for dietary supplements is so dangerous.
This legislation is being sold as a “transparency” measure. In reality, it is a Trojan horse, one that would fundamentally rewrite how supplements are regulated in the United States, undermine the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) and choke off the very innovation millions of Americans rely on for preventive care.
Mandatory product listing is not pro-health. It is anti-MAHA.
Unfortunately, this bill promotes the false notion—and feeds fuel to our critics—that dietary supplements sold in the U.S. are in desperate need of federal oversight and regulations. However, the fact remains: Ingredient disclosures, truthful labeling, adverse event reporting, facility registration and compliance with current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) are not optional. They are rooted in U.S. laws and FDA regulations.
It’s also a fallacy that FDA is in the dark about the products sold in the U.S. The last time I checked, CVS, Kroger and Walgreens locations (containing aisles of dietary supplement products) are open to the public, and that includes FDA staff who are free to review the labels. The National Institutes of Health maintains the Dietary Supplement Label Database, which includes nearly 215,000 labels. And not only can FDA search e-commerce sites selling supplements, but it has authority to review product labels during its routine and for-cause inspections.
What this bill does is not create transparency but quietly replaces a post-market enforcement system with a pre-clearance regime, transforming FDA into a gatekeeper with the power to delay, block or effectively ban lawful products without due process. Mandatory product listing will make it easier for FDA to disrupt the marketplace and chill innovation, targeting specific products or ingredients, even when regulators are not focused on safety concerns and we as industry disagree with their interpretation of statutory provisions (e.g. drug preclusion) in the law.
For example, let’s assume MPL is law and FDA is now armed with a database containing the newest and hottest peptide. It could more readily fire off letters to scores of supplement brands and e-commerce sites, asserting drug preclusion and causing market mayhem—all without due process in the courts.
This is not rhetoric. We have actually lived this reality with NAC and NMN. FDA overreach forced years of costly litigation and administrative actions simply to preserve lawful consumer access. Amid the turmoil, some prominent e-commerce sites deferred to FDA’s positions, to the detriment of supplement brands and despite no decisions or resolutions at the time in the judiciary.
As the only trade association CEO representing the dietary supplement industry who has served as FDA’s chief regulator of dietary supplements, I am uniquely positioned to speak to the regulatory tools FDA already possesses and exercises. I have worked directly with these authorities. I have seen how FDA investigates, warns, seizes, recalls and criminally prosecutes bad actors. I understand the difference between enforcement failures and enforcement gaps.
Mandatory product listing fixes neither problem.
FDA is not powerless, blind or bereft of legal authorities. When FDA chooses to use the tools that Congress has already given it, those tools are highly effective.
Granting FDA access to another vast database of product labels will not improve safety. FDA must enforce the law and without excessive delays that undermine DSHEA, and we support industry-led strategies to self-police and create additional disincentives for bad actors.
Simply put, NPA is ardently opposed to mandatory product listing because it will fundamentally alter the regulatory structure created over 30 years ago under DSHEA, when Congress made a deliberate choice. It rejected a drug-style premarket system for supplements and instead created a post-market enforcement framework that protects public safety while preserving consumer access.
Manufacturers have a duty to ensure their products are safe. Labels must be truthful. Serious adverse events must be reported. And FDA has broad authority to inspect, warn, seize, recall, and with DOJ collaboration, criminally prosecute bad actors and permanently shut down manufacturing facilities.
That balance was intentional. And it is the backbone of America’s wellness economy.
Mandatory product listing would move our industry closer to a drug-style regulatory regime and embolden our critics to advocate for further reforms, suffocating the entrepreneurship and innovation that has fueled the industry’s extraordinary growth.
The natural products community has opposed MPL for years. As the American Herbal Products Association’s late CEO Michael McGuffin warned, mandatory listing is redundant, legally unnecessary and dangerously expensive. FDA already has the authority to obtain the information it needs to protect public health. Creating a massive federal database does not improve safety; it creates a new compliance trap that will be used as an enforcement shortcut, a litigation weapon from the plaintiff’s class action bar and a pretext for regulatory mission creep.
NPA’s analysis of earlier versions of this legislation made another point unmistakably clear: The burden will fall hardest on small businesses. Compliance costs, reporting requirements, constant updates and legal exposure will not adversely impact multinational corporations nearly as much as startups, family-run brands and innovative wellness companies.
This bill would shrink the market, reduce product diversity and drive consolidation, pushing smaller brands out of the industry and ironically favoring the very Big Pharma-style regulatory model that MAHA rejects.
Supporters claim MPL will protect consumers. But there is no evidence it will.
Scofflaws do not comply with paperwork requirements. Criminals do not self-report. And bad actors who sell dangerous ingredients in products masquerading as dietary supplements—flouting the law and endangering public health—are not suddenly terrified of a misbranding violation for failing to share their actual labels with FDA.
A registry does not stop the distribution and sale of contaminated or illegal products. It merely adds another bureaucratic layer for companies that already follow the law.
Worse, the public-facing database proposed by this bill would become a goldmine for trial lawyers. NPA and AHPA have repeatedly warned that a centralized registry would invite opportunistic litigation, where minor technicalities become grounds for lawsuits. That doesn’t protect consumers. It enriches litigators.
And let’s be honest about what this means for everyday Americans.
Mandatory product listing would slow the introduction of new products, raise costs and reduce choice. Said another way, it would restrict access to preventive wellness tools that millions of Americans use to stay healthy, manage chronic conditions and avoid more expensive medical interventions.
That is the opposite of MAHA.
MAHA is about empowerment.
MAHA is about access.
MAHA is about innovation.
MAHA is about trusting Americans to take their health into their own hands.
The Natural Products Association will continue to oppose mandatory product listing publicly, aggressively and without apology because this is not a minor regulatory tweak. It is a structural rewrite of the rules.
This bill doesn’t modernize DSHEA. It dismantles it.
It doesn’t improve safety. It expands bureaucracy.
Mandatory product listing doesn’t empower consumers. It threatens to restrict their options.
If Congress is serious about protecting public health, it should focus on FDA enforcing existing laws, targeting bad actors and educating consumers—not building a federal choke point that will inevitably be abused by the government or blood-thirsty litigants.
In conclusion, mandatory product listing is not about promoting transparency or health. It is government control disguised as protection.
And it deserves to be defeated—yet again.
