Thanks to an ongoing quality assurance program by the National Animal Supplement Council (Valley Center, Calif.), manufacturers and government officials can more easily research negative reactions associated with supplement products for dogs, cats and horses.

NASC’s Adverse Event Reporting System contains comprehensive information about more than 300 million total administrations of various supplement products.

“It is cost-prohibitive for suppliers to conduct safety studies such as those required for drug companies,” said Bill Bookout, president of NASC. “However, we do understand the need to maintain vigilance for both products and ingredients, so by initiating our adverse event reporting system our members are provided a comprehensive system to help them properly evaluate adverse events and take corrective action if necessary.”

The system allows NASC to produce a risk report for any ingredient that its members market.

“This revolutionary system allows our industry members and the regulatory agencies access to quantitative and qualitative data never before available,” Bookout said. “Although the NAERS system is proprietary and the data confidential, we are posting ingredient risk reports for glucosamine HCl and MSM on NASC’s Web site to illustrate the comprehensive nature of the data we make available to the ]Food and Drug Administration’s] Center for Veterinary Medicine. It is a revolutionary system, and one in which our members can justifiably take pride.”

NASC defines an adverse event as any negative physical effect or health problem that may be associated with use of an animal supplement, including transient occurrences such as diarrhea or vomiting. Member companies are required to report, investigate and resolve adverse events monthly.

To get a more complete view of adverse events, members are entering historical data as far back as 1995 into the system.

The system tracks adverse events by product/ingredient, as well as the aggregate administrations for 643 ingredients in the marketplace. In the first 12 months of the system going live, members accounted for approximately 220 million supplement administrations and reported only 133 adverse events, none of which were serious or resulted in long-term injury to an animal.

For more information, visit www.nasc.cc. [March 2005 PET AGE]