117th Congress says “no” to mandatory product listing (MPL)

• By: AHPA
• On: 12/28/2022 15:30:33
• In: Regulation / Legislation

December 28, 2022

On Friday, December 23, President Joe Biden signed the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by the House that same day and by the Senate earlier in the week. As reported by the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) last week, the omnibus bill notably excluded provisions that would have established a mandatory product listing (MPL) requirement for dietary supplements marketed in the United States. Following unsuccessful efforts to pass standalone MPL legislation this year, a last-ditch attempt to include MPL provisions in the omnibus has failed.

The exclusion of MPL provisions comes within weeks of AHPA's letter to the leadership of the Senate and House of Representatives committees with oversight over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in which the association requested that MPL language be excluded from any must-pass appropriations legislation considered during the last weeks of the 117th Congress. The decision to shelve MPL legislation in the current Congress also followed a December 7 floor speech in which Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) made his final appeal to his Senate colleagues to include MPL legislation in the omnibus bill.

A longtime proponent of establishing a legal requirement for listing of dietary supplements with the FDA, Sen. Durbin introduced the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022 with Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) in April and has reportedly vowed to continue to push for MPL legislation in the next Congress, which will convene in January 2023.

AHPA has actively engaged in discussions with legislators, committee staffs, the FDA, and other stakeholders on MPL for years and will continue to represent the diverse perspectives of AHPA's membership in future discussions. These efforts, among others, represent only a part of AHPA's continued advocacy for modern dietary supplement regulations that will provide greater consumer access to truthful information and a more equitable and transparent path to market for new dietary ingredients.