Natural Products Insider

ToddCast Vol. XVIII: You say you want a revolution? Hemp is the answer—that’s right, it can pave the way to better alternatives than many of the problems staring us in the face as industrial, civilized humans – the plastic problem, the climate crisis, the pollution of our waterways, the unsustainable way we have organized our societies. Natural Products Insider senior editor Todd Runestad catches up the hemp majordomo promoter Morris Beegle, co-founder and president of WAFBA—short for We Are For Better Alternatives. Listen in as they dig into: How it’s time for people engaged in the hemp CBD business to go pro—or go home and stop gumming up the architecture of this fledgling industry. The key to the realm of hemp dominance is when “whole plant utilization” comes to fruition—using not just the flower for CBD but the stems, stalks and seeds for biomaterials, biofuels, bioplastics, animal feed and healthy human nutrition. The one entity that can save us from being “f@(#*d” by climate change and lead the

Too much hemp in the fields and barns, too many brands, too little regulatory certainty (and misguided when it does get released). Buckle up! Josh Hendrix has been around the hemp farms, the hemp businesses, the hemp boards. He’s sharp, smart and informed—and reasonably hip, at least by Kentucky standards. Natural Products Insider senior editor Todd Runestad sat down with Josh to assess the damage from smoking embers of the hemp CBD business in mid-2020. Yes, there was massive overproduction in 2019. Yes, there is regulatory intransigence. Yes, there was 4,000 hemp CBD brands at last count. But you know what you don’t know? - How the leading CBD brand is positioning itself as something bigger than just a hemp CBD brand. - The big mistake most of those CBD brands make that will be a big contributor to their ultimate demise. - “If you and I get on the phone in 10 years and hemp fiber is not a huge part of the materials world, I’ll be shocked.”

Tennessee’s Frederick Cawthon is emblematic of a 2020 hemp farmer—in 2019 his team grew 85 acres, and then thanks to the oversupply and consequent market saturation and price collapse, in 2020 he grew 15 acres. Hear Cawthon’s founding story of how he got into the hemp business, how he assembled a crack growing team, marshaled investors, even cajoled the local college president to open dormant dorms to farm workers during the summer grow season. But more than that, hear Cawthon speak about hemp’s potential to revitalize rural regions, and how CBD has the potential to be the next great ingredient that can be infused in a range of products by the world’s biggest CPG companies. Listen to this fascinating Toddcast with Natural Products Insider’s senior editor Todd Runestad, as they discuss: - How his mother, the Lord, the universe and CNN fit into the spark of an idea to change his life and become a hemp farmer. - How hemp can be a zero-carbon detox agent to clean up farms, communities and ecosystems. - H

Hemp acreage has gone from 7,000 acres in 2015 to 27,000 to 78,000 in 2017 to an eye-popping half a million acres after the 2018 farm bill was passed. The ensuing gut has scaled back many farmers’ plans even while more farmers chase the gold ring—but the bigger problem remains intransigence by the FDA and USDA, which seem to be doing their drug warrior best to keep the hemp market from reaching full potential. Natural Products Insider senior editor Todd Runestad sat down with Rick Trojan, president of the Hemp Industries Association, to talk about a wide-ranging number of hempy topics, including: - Are we in Bustville? Too much USDA opposition making farmers felons, too much FDA creating fear around CBD, too many farmers getting in too fast and driving down the price? - How institutional racism figures into the history of hemp (it’s not a pretty sight, and it will open your eyes). #BLM - Is the main challenge to hemp how potentially disruptive it is to various pre-existing industries? Are you up for t

Despite the impact on business and industry posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, dietary supplement companies are still obligated to meet regulatory requirements including supplier qualification, ingredient testing, aspects of GMP compliance and more; every person involved in compliance must understand their responsibilities. To support the gap around in-person education and training, NSF International has developed Quality & Regulatory Digital Week, taking place August 3 to 7, 2020. Designed with the global nutraceutical industry in mind, various courses delve into particular aspects of regulatory compliance. The two-part Botanical Identification and Testing Course, set for August 6 and 7, addresses a range of issues unique to the herbal industry. In this Healthy Insider podcast, John Travis, senior research scientist at NSF, offers thoughts around the importance of botanical identification and testing methodologies. In this podcast, Travis and Informa’s Heather Granato discuss: • Why botanical identification

Adulteration of botanicals has been going a fact of human commerce since time immemorial. Only very recently has the game taken a turn for the technical as criminals and unsuspecting buyers use ever-more sophisticated tools—and schemes—to stay ahead of each other. In response, the American Botanical Council has co-created a Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program, a free series of bulletins to help buyers, brands and contract manufacturers learn which ingredients are being targeted, and the means why which adulterers are using to fool tests. Natural Products Insider’s senior editor Todd Runestad sat down with ABC’s founder, Mark Blumenthal, to discuss the risks at stake. Tune in to discover: - How saw palmetto is being spiked with help from the animal slaughter trade. - What manufacturers can do to prevent rejected raw materials from re-entering the trade. - Whether blockchain can be a viable tool to ensure trustworthiness in the trade. On Thursday, July 9, from 2:00-2:30pm Eastern time, tune in

Plenty of former and current professional athletes advocate for the use of CBD in sports nutrition, and many of them have launched their own line of supplements or topical products in this space. However, selling CBD products to athletes is both riskier and less risky than selling CBD products to other demographics. To explain this conundrum, Rick Collins, partner at Collins Gann McCloskey & Barry, joins Sandy Almendarez, content director, Informa Markets, on this podcast to discuss the legal aspects of selling CBD in sports nutrition products.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is set up to assess and approve single synthetic chemical constituent pharmaceutical drugs—drug, after all, is its middle name. But food is its first name, yet the agency has a great deal of difficulty regulating dietary supplements, in particular botanicals with many different active phytochemicals in a plant, and especially hemp CBD with one ingredient in particular, THC, being a controlled substance drug! So it’s a challenging scenario all the way around, from the regulators to the would-be regulated. Natural Products Insider senior editor Todd Runestad digs into these important—and vexing—issues with Duffy MacKay, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for CV Sciences, a pioneering and leading brand known for its PlusCBD Oil line. Tune in and listen to the pair discuss some provocative issues, including: What does regulatory compliance look like to a hemp CBD company? What else looks different in the hemp CBD world compared to the larger diet

Research is only in its infancy in cannabinoid research, though it is clear they have benefit. The future may portend new tricks in product formulation. Yes, we will continue to discover new individual cannabinoids, a la CBD isolate that’s been approved as a pharmaceutical drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. We will also see blending combinations of individual cannabinoids. We will also see increased research on the so-called entourage effect--the mixture of all the cannabinoids inside the cannabis plant—even, yes, with THC. There will also be deeper looks at the terpenes. And also, the blending of hemp with complementary botanicals. The future is truly wide open. Join Informa senior editor Todd Runestad as he takes a deep dive into the hemp fields with Jason Mitchell, co-founder and president of hemp pioneering company HempFusion, as they look beyond CBD and go into: • Why is CBG not only an emerging cannabinoid but is in fact the mother of all cannabinoids? • Beta-caryophyllene and the aroma

The Organic & Natural Health Association (O&N), with research support from Grassroots Health, submitted a health claim petition to FDA regarding vitamin D’s role in reducing preterm births. According to Karen Howard, CEO and executive director of O&N, this petition was denied because FDA said the studies didn’t account for the vitamin D participants received through sunlight exposure. Rather than walk away defeated, Howard and her Association made lemonade out of lemons, by supporting the substantiation of a structure/function claim, which currently appears on Simply GOODHEALTH’s Vitamin D3 label. In this podcast with Sandy Almendarez, content director, Informa Markets, Howard tells the tale of the structure/function claim development and what lessons the rest of the industry can learn.

The natural products industry is less diverse than the general population in terms of the consumers we serve and the individuals that lead our companies. Yet, this market is full of people who want to improve the justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (J.E.D.I.) makeup of our cultures, customers and consumers. The first step in education, especially for those who are just becoming aware of the privilege they hold in society and the ways they operate within an unjust system. This podcast with Laura Dickinson and Sheryl O’Loughlin, cofounders of the J.E.D.I. Collaborative discusses the resources available and actions brands can take to further J.E.D.I. in the natural products industry.

Contemporary notions of health and wellness are changing for consumers, who are seeking involvement in managing or preventing health conditions that affect their lives. How do supplements fit in?

Jon catches up with Brent Tignor, Vice President Human Resources at Balchem Corporation. Learn more at: https://www.https://balchem.com

There is no cure for the novel coronavirus. Still, consumers are searching for natural supplements that optimize immune function. Is there anything new under the sun?

Jon catches up with David Thibodeau, Managing Director at Wellvest Capital. Learn more at: https://www.https://wellvestcapital.com

Once upon a time in probiotic history, the probiotic genus lactobacillus had 261 species, but as of mid-April 2020, it was reclassified into 23 novel genera as well as the previously known lactobacillus, paralactobacillus and pediococcus (Int J Syst Evol Microbiol. 2020 Apr 15. DOI: 10.1099/ijsem.0.004107). This reclassification has a huge impact on products made with probiotics that fall into this family, since this change can cause confusion among regulators, consumers and formulators. In this podcast, Ivan Wasserman, managing partner, Amin Talati Wasserman, discusses what probiotic brands need to consider given this change, as well as other pressing legal concerns.

Elan Sudberg of Garden Grove, California-based Alkemist Labs, talks with Jon Benninger, VP of the Health & Nutrition Network of for Informa Markets about how smaller-scale labs prepared for the impact of COVID-19.

Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D., is author of many books that reveal the shortcomings of the allopathic medical model. Many of these issues can be addressed by targeted, sometimes high-dose, nutritional supplementation. In this Healthy Insider Podcast, senior editor Todd Runestad talks with Teitelbaum about compelling supplement solutions that any supplement formulator or retailer in store aisles would do well to tune in on: - 10% of the people who get covid-19, even a mild form, may come down with post-viral fibromyalgia and fatigue. - Why don’t conventional American doctors give much thought to fibromyalgia and fatigue? - Key supplement categories to focus on—and the ingredients that power them—beyond immune health here in the world full of pandemonium.

Wilson Lau talks about how his toddler is teaching him how to approach life again "with a renewed curiosity.” He said Nuherbs has adopted all the measures, but at the same time cut back on OT to keep employee mental health a priority. He also explains his three reasons his company was fortunate with the outbreak - number one, being organic and lab-tested means you contract out with farmers and wild collectors well in advance. Lots more too about supply chains and adulteration concerns.

Paul Schulick is co-founder of the legacy New Chapter supplements company, and has just launched For the Biome—at the start, a skin-care company with formulations that “speak your skin’s language” and “awaken your skin, microbiome, and consciousness.” Get ready to expand your consciousness in this scintillating conversation with an industry pioneer and innovator who is bringing new thinking to preventive health care. In this Healthy Insider Podcast, senior editor Todd Runestad and Schulick go deep on topics such as: • The root of why we are not healthy is America’s disease-treatment system and not a true health-care system. Is today’s health crisis an opportunity to shift that paradigm? • The challenge of using best-in-class ingredients, and how the most expensive product is the one that does not work. • Schulick’s basic message for people who want to survive the coronavirus and also for those who want to live a healthy, sustainable, sentient, compassionate life in the 21st Century and beyond.