Couple of things to illustrate how stupid (or intentionally stupid) Amazon is…
This new policy - Seller is in total control. Samples aren’t coming from Amazon. If you are doing something wrong with what you actually sell but can get your hands on product / bulk that’s the way it’s supposed to be - you’re good. Green light to keep on being a fraud and get yourself “Certified” good at the same time.
Style Guide I got from SAS - Check this out. Really Amazon. “Fist” instead of “First”. Let’s face it, a lot of us feel like Amazon is giving us the fist most of the time. Now they put it in writing.
Which isn’t exactly hard to do. All you have to do is order from a good brand and submit that to NSF as your sample.
But at that point Amazon did their due diligence and can deflect liability.
It’s the same reason bars buy ID scanners, it’s not because they actually catch fake IDs, but it shows they did more than the minimum when there is a problem so they can have a chance at appealing the violation with the liquor board.
Our resident expert in this arena, @ASV_Vites, may well know more, but my best guess would be that Amazon is aware that NSF is working on an update for this.
Not gonna lie, ASV_Vites was my fav OSFE industry resource, and finding the migration to SAS has caused me stalk this as a resource as well.
I’m 50/50 on if Amazon has inside knowledge of a 2024 NSF/ANSI 173 update; ‘vardenafil’ was spelled wrong on their dietary supplement testing page for 2 years (the last letter was missing, and the page went through several reformats like that).
Are you selling in Weight Loss / Sports Nutrition / Sexual enhancers categories?
If you’re not then you have nothing to worry about.
I wouldn’t be overly concerned about the awful / inaccurate information posted by Amazon on this. If you have items tagged for compliance, I imagine the workflow is in place to get the work done with one of the 3 choices.
We don’t sell in those 3 subcategories so I’ve moved on and don’t know much about the process because I have other things to worry about.
I missed that part - thanks. I find it incredibly hard to believe that those 3 TIC’s can handle the hundreds of thousands of ASIN’s in the category, if not more.
I really hope this is true though. We buy and test many of our BS competitors just to see how they are doing. They all fail Assay on their actives. Most are close but some of them are way off.
And exactly how are we to do this with nothing on the compliance dashboard? Amazon was very specific that they will accept nothing from 3rd party sellers. I suppose the smart thing to do is have your testing done by Eurofins. Supposedly if you have valid testing already from Eurofins in the same calendar year, that will be accepted and they would be the TIC you choose to pass the compliance. We have a good relationship with them. We rarely use them bc they are slower than the ISO we use normally.
It’s a shame that Amazon put this out there and didn’t just surprise us. This gives the creeps and criminals in the category a chance to make product that will pass the test.
The way Amazon should be doing this is pulling random inventory from their own inventory and sending it out themselves and charging the seller. 97% of the category is FBA, for FBM, they should order from the seller.
Amazon already does random checks with buying inventory from sellers and the destination address is Covance or Eurofins. This was discussed on the OSFE. Unsure if this is still in practice but it was.
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The way Amazon should be doing this is pulling random inventory from their own inventory and sending it out themselves and charging the seller. 97% of the category is FBA, for FBM, they should order from the seller.
100%, this is how they should be doing that, but no, anyone with half a brain and an ounce of skeeze can game the system since they’re letting the seller provide their own samples to the lab.
To get ahead of the testing, all you could do is try to contact the labs to ask what testing Amazon MIGHT require for non weight loss/bodybuilding/sexual enhancement products (presumably they’d require the heavy metal, microbial, pesticide testing, + label claim verification?), but it seems like the labs are getting a ton of leeway with how they determine pass/fail.
Why would you think that? There are standards in place for this. Plate count for micro and yeast and mold. Meeting or exceeding label claim on actives, and set amounts not to exceed for heavy metals.
Before anyone freaks out about heavy metals in supplements - this comes from anything that’s grown in the ground, just like the fruits and veggies you eat. Doesn’t come from various pieces of the machine falling apart. Those issues are taking care of in production with metal detectors…
There’s a lot of issues with this. For one, many ASINs have multiple sellers, and it may be none of those sellers’ responsibility to do the testing. Usually it’s the manufacturer that’s responsible for footing the cost of that (and any reputable brand has already footed the cost of that and has documentation to provide to the TIC to verify and pass on to Amazon). And even if it is the manufacturer that’s the sole seller of the product, they might have (and should have) already done that testing. It wouldn’t really be fair to make them pay for a full round of testing just for 1 platform.
There’s some brands I sell that I might be willing to pay a test fee to continue selling, but there’s plenty that I wouldn’t be because the volume isn’t high enough to justify it. If the manufacturer doesn’t have test results already, and they’re unwilling to pay the cost of the test (or are unwilling to do it because they know it won’t pass), then that’s their issue to deal with, not mine.
Yea, I hear you on that. Not sure how Amazon plans to manage this and on the webinar, that question was asked at least 6 times.
THIS should be the brand owners responsibility but what happens when the brand isn’t one of the sellers? Who’s footing the bill then? Roll the dice? The seller with the highest volume?
Amazon needs to straighten this out before they expand the program, IF they expand the program. I don’t think it’s being expanded. Not sure that the Mod that wrote that post on the forum knew what they were talking about.
The person running that Webinar seemed to be pretty decently well versed on the category which was surprising. Stated multiple times that the program will only be expanded to sub cats that fell under additional scrutiny.
I still think there will be big industry push back on this because what Amazon is trying to do, just like the last time they tried something similar a couple years ago, is not in line with FDA regulations of the industry.
IDK if you were around back then but it was a big deal. There was a date set for roll out, that date got moved out a few times and then BOOM - never heard about it again. Pathetic.
There were a lot of sellers that spent a lot of money to get ready for something that never materialized.
I use “a ton” of leeway rather… loosely. So far, we don’t have a ton of information about what precisely Amazon’s requirements are, just that they exist, and the labs seem to being deemed the SMEs because Amazon is finally admitting that they are NOT.
Eurofins did a webinar where they were going to allow class I nutrients (legally to be present at NLT 100% of label claim) to pass at 90% (to account for testing variability) & class II nutrients (legally to be present at NLT 80% of label claim) to pass at 70% (to account for testing variability), which is somewhat reasonable. They’re also indicating that quantifiable label claim will be tested at a rate of 5 + (1/5).
Heavy metals - Eurofins indicated they also want to include the standard 4 (lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury), plus chromium (hexavalent). Thresholds were not listed.
Eurofins-listed micro testing included USP <2021>, <2022>, and <62>, and specifically mentioned everything we’re testing for (total aerobic plate count, yeast/mold, E. coli, Salmonella sp., Staph. aureus), but also adding Pseudomonas and total Enterobacteriaceae. Thresholds were not listed.
We’re not doing sketchy things. I just would feel better if they would make these guidelines transparent.
If the brand owner isn’t involved, then it’s whatever seller decides the cost is worth continuing to offer those items. If that seller doesn’t exist, ASIN gets pulled.
I like your style