Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program Receives Award from NBJ

Nutrition Business Journal (NBJ) recently awarded the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP) with its 2025 ‘Efforts on Behalf of the Industry’ award. The award recognizes individuals and organizations making significant contributions to the nutraceutical and dietary supplement industries.

“With constant updates on the latest threats of adulteration in a complex global supply chain and a steady cadence of reports to guide the testing that detects adulteration, BAPP has emerged as a game-changing driver of quality,” said Rick Polito, editor-in-chief of NBJ. “The program’s ‘Burn It, Don’t Return It’ demand that brands and co-manufacturers take test-failing ingredients out of the supply chain is an example of the kind of fearless voice that BAPP has become and another sign of why it deserves NBJ’s Efforts on Behalf of the Industry Award.”

BAPP’s mission is to educate industry members about the adulteration of plant and fungal ingredients, and it conducts research to inform the industry about how these ingredients are adulterated, either accidentally or intentionally, as well as which lab methods are best suited to detect adulteration.

BAPP is a collaboration between the National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR) at the University of Mississippi, the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia (AHP), and the American Botanical Council (ABC).

“Unfortunately, when commercial motivation is involved, adulteration is a sad reality,” said Roy Upton, president of AHP. BAPP “was designed as a positive initiative to bring awareness to this issue, as without awareness, no improvements can be made. By educating the industry on why adulteration happens and providing tools for how to detect them, we empower those who strive to do the right thing and shine a light on those ingredients that require the most scrutiny. We are grateful for NBJ’s acknowledgement of the value of our work,” Upton said.

“I thank NBJ’s Bill Giebler and Rick Polito and the NBJ team and awards judges for honoring the unique and much-needed work that BAPP has done since its inception in early 2011,” said Mark Blumenthal, founder and executive director of ABC. “The work of BAPP — now with at least 95 peer-reviewed documents that are freely accessible to anyone in the world, including the BAPP Best Practices SOP for the Disposal / Destruction of Irreparably Defective Articles — is an essential body of quality and authenticity resources designed to enhance consumer health by alerting the responsible members of the herb industry about types of adulteration and fraud, and how to protect responsible companies from being victimized by the fraudsters by preventing the purchase of fraudulent ingredients and removing ‘irreparably defective articles’ from the supply chain.”

“BAPP has been addressing the issue of quality which certainly affects the safety and efficacy of the products. Making industry and consumers aware of these issues hopefully will help reduce quality concerns. We are delighted to receive this recognition,” said Ikhlas Khan, PhD, director of NCNPR.