Omnibus spending bill does not include mandatory product listing provision

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The 2023 Omnibus Appropriations bill, a $1.7 trillion government funding package was released early on Tuesday, December 20, 2022. The so-called omnibus spending bill does not include a mandatory product listing provision which would require dietary supplement manufacturers to submit information about each of their products to FDA to be published in a public registry. The provision was originally introduced by Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) as the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022. Later, a similar provision was folded into the FDA Safety and Landmark Advancement Act (FDASLA), a FDA user fee reauthorization bill, but did not make it into the final draft of the bill. Attempts by Durbin to include the provision in the omnibus spending bill did not come to fruition either.

Within the industry, the merits of mandatory products listings have been hotly debated. The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN; Washington, D.C.) advocated for the provision, while other trade organizations such as the Natural Products Association (NPA; Washington, D.C.) and the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA; Silver Spring, MD) expressed opposition to it.

Upon news that the omnibus spending bill would not include a mandatory product listing provision, NPA celebrated the news as a “significant victory” for the association. “This is a big win for consumers, for innovation, and for access to the healthy products that millions of Americans rely on and turned to during the height of the pandemic. We expected that industry critics would try to use the lame duck as another backdoor opportunity to jam this through and that’s exactly what happened. But thanks to NPA’s advocacy and the tens of thousands of individuals who took part in our grassroots campaign, that effort was rejected. We are incredibly thankful to our members, our Board of Directors, and our allies in Congress who stood firm against this misguided and unnecessary approach,” said Daniel Fabricant, PhD, president and CEO of the Natural Products Association, in a press release.

AHPA too lobbied for the provision’s exclusion during the lame duck session in a letter addressed to the ranking members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pension (HELP) and House Committee on Energy & Commerce.

The legislation must be passed by Friday, December 23, 2022 to avoid a government shutdown.