“Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns.” (Deuteronomy 24:14) SNEAK ATTACK Business is always evolving, but it’s hard to prepare for unreasonable government actions. On February 3, 2015, the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman inflicted serious damage to the natural products industry, and four large firms in particular. GNC, Walmart, Walgreens and Target were caught by surprise when Schneiderman declared that a new and unknown testing method, DNA barcoding, is the new standard for testing herbs. He put out a media blitz featuring 390 total tests by a barcoding expert, which showed most herb products by these four retailers failed to either contain the herb listed on the label, or included undeclared contaminants. Schneiderman basically went to war with the natural products industry. Very public cease-and-desist letters were sent to these large retailers demanding that they stop selling their house brands of Echinacea, Ginseng, St. John’s Wort and other herbs. The Attorney General claimed that 79% of products failed testing and major news media picked up and ran with the story. Schneiderman did a marvelous job marketing how “Mislabeled Consumer Products Pose Unacceptable Health Hazards”. He cited support from a New York State Senator, a New York State Assembly Member, a Senior Nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a Professor of Pharmacological Sciences at Stony Brook University. Initially, the attack looked like a scientific slam-dunk win for consumers, and Mr. Schneiderman in particular. As the industry prepared to defend itself, DNA barcoding experts came forward to shed new light on the subject. It turns out that DNA fingerprinting (barcoding) definitely helps to identify the right herbal species being tested, but it has very limited use for herbal extracts. The DNA test is just too new to work for extracts, and those were the products tested by the Attorney General. FDA itself issued a statement noting that the agency neither uses nor requires DNA barcoding and considered it not yet validated for herbal testing. It also came to light that Mr. Schneiderman’s chief DNA barcoding expert, Dr. James A. Shulte of Clarkson University, is not really an expert at all. Dr. Schulte has a background in evolutionary biology and reptilian zoology, but is not considered an expert in botany, pharmacognosy, or natural product chemistry. Finally, the Attorney General, himself, has come under the microscope for his true intentions with this unscientific attack. Various media questioned his methods for gaining public exposure for this and other investigations, and whether his real intentions are more political in nature. Regardless, companies such as GNC suffered financially from this witch hunt. GNC, alone, experienced significant sales declines in the herbal category and overall from lack of consumer confidence in supplements. GNC’s share price fell dramatically from $48 in February 2015 to only $7 just over two years later! A black cloud affected the entire industry and lawyers lined up like sharks with new lawsuits. At NOW, we were only glad to be spared the direct negative exposure that hit GNC, as the entire affair seemed wrongly intentioned, unfair and untrue. 122 BEATING THE ODDS
