Good manufacturing practices

I recently received a Google Alert (key word: “curcumin”) that pleased me very much. The link took me to the website of the NSF or National Sanitation Foundation, which, according to Wikipedia, is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization that develops standards and provides product certification and education in the field of public health and safety. Interesting website, actually, I will have to check it out more thoroughly when I have more time (more…TIME??? Belly laugh: hahahaha! ).
 
At any rate, a few months ago Sabinsa contacted NSF to pursue ingredient certification for a number of their raw materials, as you can read here: http://tinyurl.com/2fgfon
 
Among the raw materials to be certified was the curcumin that I and many others take: Curcumin C3 Complex. The NSF ingredient certification process took approximately sixty days and included a formulation review, an audit of the Sabinsa manufacturing facility in Mysore, India and ingredient component testing to verify conformance to NSF American National Standard 173-Dietary Supplements. Sabinsa Corporation was pleased with the outcome as all six ingredients were certified. This excellent news is almost hot off the press, perhaps a couple of weeks old. 

Oh, and by the way, I came across a curious little fact on the NSF Wikipedia page, which I found confirmed elsewhere, too: the chairman of the NSF Board of Directors happens to be (!) the vice-president for GlaxoSmithKline’s (big pharma!) Worldwide Regulatory Affairs…hmmm, hardly someone who would be thrilled to have curcumin or any other natural product certified, no? So this makes this bit of news, in my view, rather remarkable. Good for Sabinsa!

(Disclaimer: by the way, I am in no way involved with Sabinsa Corporation, financially or otherwise. I am just someone who takes C3 Complex, either in powder or capsule form. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to state that I have now and again received free supplement offers, which I have always courteously and firmly turned down…not because I am a millionnaire, hah!, but because I want to test substances "with no strings attached." If I cannot afford a supplement, I simply won’t take it. End of story.)