What is in your fish-oil? Could it be made with Chinese fish-oil?
It is simple for nutritional supplement organizations to discover loopholes in rules for the labeling process. And most do. I haven’t ever learned of any nutritional supplement business having legal issues for country of origin problems.
Regulations That Are 80 Years Old
The regulations regulating country of origin declaration are more than 80 years old. Things are different now. Sadly, the regulations haven’t changed with the times, and the law says that the country of origin happens to be the place where the products underwent a “substantial transformation”. That’s a pretty big loophole to exploit.
Interestingly, the US Customs and Border Defense, not the United States Food and Drug Administration, is accountable for country of origin supervision.
A whole lot of the fish-oil pills offered in American drugstores, food markets, and shops are Chinese in origin.
There’s NOTHING preventing the mixing of high quality fish oil with barely-passable Chinese fish-oil to bump up the specifications of the completed merchandise that we buy.
Fish Oil and Retailers
Provided that the ‘label claims’ (levels of EPA and DHA) and contaminant degrees pass, every thing is accepted and sent off.
This whole thing is a logistical nightmare for a sizable retailer to maintain, and to ensure that they can properly ship any substantial volumes of fish-oil, the oil is often bought from everywhere and anywhere they’re able to.
Due to this, if you purchase a specific name of fish-oil at a larger retailer and choose to phone the customer support number to determine product’s country of origin, you’ll likely be completely wasting your precious time. It isn’t likely the customer support representative will learn these records or have the capacity to get it for you readily.
Chinese components are inexpensive. Occasionally they’re of really high quality, and sometimes the quality is seriously lacking.
Using Chinese fish oil decreases the costs of a business. And helps to maximize their profits.