Re: Regarding Raintree Nutrition being shut down...

You can have all the proof and studies you want.

You cannot list disease names on the same page or same site you sell products on, period.

If you have a study from Yale or Harvard themselves, you cannot link to it or mention it, period. Never mention speeches, lectures, doctor approved, ect.

You can say "recent studies have shown that ____ supports a normal, healthy liver" but you cannot say who did the study, and you still cannot mention disease names.

But you better have the cold, hard study right there in your office for when they come knockin.

But by that point, you are screwed, because their foot is in the door (literally) and you are not following GMP guidelines that are posted on the FDA website for everyone to see. So get GMP compliant and sleep easy at night. 99% of ma and pa herbal companies are not GMP compliant and never will be.

If your product helps with the heart you say "helps support a normal, healthy heart (or whatever organ)"

On your label have a lot number, batch number, company name, company city, state, zipcode, never use "Nutritional Supplement" only use "Dietary Supplement" on the label, have an expiration date, have a "no soy, tree nuts, peanuts, blah, blah, blah" disclaimer on your label. Have shrink wrapped necks for glass bottles or child proof caps for plastic bottles.

I'm going to stop typing there because the GMP list is longer than a giraffes neck, so go look it up and get as compliant as possible.


SO, this is why you see so many companies radically changing their item descriptions on the web. At least the ones who have been warned. One day the FDA rolls up, and shuts them down, and AUDITS everything they do, takes about a week for bigger companies. All paperwork, all ingredients, all formulas, you better have everything written down and explain why this herb goes here and this herb goes in this, ect.

Then you get to pay for the agents hotel, their time, car rental, expenses, ect.

I know a guy who called one company because the ingredients were not on the site! The woman on the other end of the phone said she would fax the ingredients to him. Insane!!!

There is another site that was pretty imaginative. They have the product name that is generic sounding "KR-25" for example. Absolutely no ingredients, and no description.

But next to the name is a pic of a guy holding his kidney area and the kidney area is red. So.... "must be for the kidneys!" is what the person looking at the product page will say. Its too bad that site has to jump through hoops like that.

A guy I know who has a small,small company that offers herbal goodies to the public. He has been cleared through the Department of Agriculture. Once a month, for one day only, he rents a facility with a full stainless steel kitchen that is inspected by the county health department regularly. Once a month he makes all of his stuff in this inspected full service kitchen, bottles everything right there, cleans up and takes the sealed bottles back to his office where he puts those bottles on a nice wire shelf with a ceramic floor underneath and it looks awesome and its clean and IF they come knockin he shows his reciept for the health department cleared kitchen, he will show his Dept. of Agriculture certificate, and they can still shut him down if they feel like it!! But he is doing the best he can.

Your best course of action is to let another company deal with this BS, and you just re-sell their products. That way you are just a humble distributor, making no claims.

But then you are at the mercy of some guy in another state who may not be making a product as awesome as you know in your heart that you could make with your own hands. For gifted, creative people, its a hard choice.


So, fly under the radar, make no disease claims, have a nice clean product, and go with God.



Gravitas,

The Adonis