Several dietary supplement manufacturers have joined to launch the Coalition for Supplement Sustainability, a new trade association established "to maintain sustainable, independently verifiable and transparent standards across the entire supplement supply chain."

The coalition started out as the Non-GMO Dietary Supplement Working Group, which was founded two years ago to secure an ingredient supply chain free of genetically modified organisms for the supplement industry, according to Bethany Davis, the coalition's communications director.

"We've decided to formalize our group, give it a new name, and move towards an industry consensus of what the non-GMO standard should be for dietary supplements," she said. "We also want to look beyond GMOs and make sure the group can take on even more issues at large for our industry."

The problem is that while there is a non-GMO standard for food products, there isn't one for supplements, Davis said. The new group's primary task will be to develop that standard.

The Coalition for Supplement Sustainability joins a crowded field with several associations already representing the supplement industry, the Council for Responsible Nutrition and Natural Products Association among them. http://bit.ly/1MKUjyu

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