Registration Open for SoCal Dietary Supplements Consortium in Costa Mesa

The SoCal Dietary Supplements Consortium (SCDSC), which was founded in 2017, will hold its 9th annual event in Costa Mesa, California, at the Avenue of the Arts Hotel. Virtual attendance is also available.

The collaborative event between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and dietary supplement industry offers regulatory updates, providing a trusted source for staying ahead of evolving compliance requirements. Attendees will include manufacturers, brand owners, marketers, ingredient suppliers, quality and regulatory professionals, contract labs, and consultants. In-person attendance is $99 and virtual is $59. Registration is available here.

Discussions will include:

• “FDA Import Operations Update: Impact on the Dietary Supplement Industry,” featuring Dan Solis, assistant commissioner for imports at FDA. The session will cover updates to FDA’s import screening tools, enforcement priorities, and compliance expectations, related to foreign supplier verification, detentions, and refusals. The session will cover how these changes impact supplement ingredients and finished products across borders, and proactive steps that can mitigate delays and ensure compliance.
• “Supplier Qualification Process,” featuring Lance Handing, head of U.S. quality and regulatory for Unilever. This session will cover today’s best practices for evaluating suppliers’ compliance with current Good Manufacturing Practices, such as assessments, on-site audits, document review, and relationships.
• “Food/Color Additives & Food Contaminant Regulations,” featuring Rakesh Amin, co-founding partner at Amin Wasserman Gurnani. This session will cover FDA and international requirements, additive approvals, usage limitations, labeling rules, and contaminant thresholds, as well as how to mitigate risks and keep pace with expectations.
• “Gummy Manufacturing: Quality and Safety Best Practices,” featuring Siobhan Gallagher Taylor, national dietary supplement expert at FDA. This session will explore processing, and packaging best practices with a focus on meeting cGMP requirements. The session will cover ingredient stability, specification requirements, cross-contamination control, microbial risks, and in-process control and testing.
• “Probiotic Safety, Controls, & Compliance” featuring George Paraskevakos, executive director of the International Probiotics Association.  This session will cover essential controls across the supply chain for probiotics, and FDA’s expectations, quality assurance strategies, and emerging global regulatory trends.
• “State of the Industry: FDA & Industry Perspective,” featuring Glen Bass, acting director of the FDA’s Office of Human Food Inspectorate East; Graham Rigby, president/CEO of the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA); and Daniel Fabricant, PhD, president and CEO of the Natural Products Association (NPA). This session will cover the regulatory landscape through the lens of both FDA and industry stakeholders, FDA organizational changes, key regulatory priorities, enforcement trends, policy developments, and market shifts.

There will also be an interactive “Ask the Experts” roundtable, where attendees can engage directly with industry experts and the agency in an open Q&A format.