Garden Grove, CA—Alkemist Labs is issuing a warning to the dietary supplements industry: Some ingredient suppliers and marketing companies have been altering valid lab reports and using those falsified reports to market their products, according to a press release. These falsifications have not been limited to Alkemist's reports.

These alterations have taken a range of forms, from changing or removing the client name to replacing the lot number, and some have actually changed the results of the analysis.

“Dateline NBC did an undercover investigation in 2012 that revealed a practice by some in the dietary supplement industry that involved issuing a Certificate of Analysis with whatever test results the client wanted, but not testing a product at all, a practice called “Dry Labbing,” said Elan Sudberg, Alkemist Labs CEO, in the release. “We’re calling this new problem “Dry Reporting” and it has the potential to create as many terrible headlines for the industry as the dry labbing scandal did. The industry needs to be on high alert.”

The most recent incident Alkemist is aware of started on May 6, when several industry contacts told Alkemist Labs that they had received an email offering elderberry botanical extracts for sale and linked lab reports that allegedly proved the identity of the extracts, but had been significantly altered. In another incident, a doctored Alkemist Labs report on elderberry was e-blasted along with a report from another lab, DNA4 Technologies, which was also misused.

David Erickson, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder of DNA4, said in the release: “We’ve demanded that the offending company send a letter to all the original e-blast recipients that correctly identifies that DNA4 did not test the extract powder described in the advertisement, as well as to modify the ad that is posted on their website and include a notation that a previous version of the ad incorrectly linked our report testing raw materials, to the advertisement for a powdered extract.”
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Sudberg added: ““We see this sort of thing from time to time, but lately it’s more common. With the supply chain strained, some companies are buying from people they have not vetted, and should proceed with extreme caution. It’s essential that whenever material changes hands, it’s tested. Don’t skip this step, especially now. And if you get a C of A that says it’s from us, email it to us and if it is authentic, we will verify that. We hope other testing labs in our industry will follow suit.”

Alkemist's guidelines, issued in 2016, are:
  • All Certificates of Analysis issued by Alkemist Labs will contain the following: “Copyright © Alkemists Pharmaceuticals 2020. All rights reserved.”
  • Clients may request to use lab reports issued by Alkemist Labs in their marketing materials, and we encourage them to do so, but must obtain written permission from the company to help weed out misused reports.
  • NO changes or redactions of any kind are permitted, nor may the Alkemist Lab name and/or logo be removed or blurred.
“The Alkemist Labs C of A is valuable because of the reputation we have built for accurate testing and deep knowledge of the products we test,” Sudberg concluded. “We intend to protect that integrity.”