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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Feds Seek to Block Firm’s Supplement Sales

(CN) - An Iowa-based supplement company has been selling potentially unsafe dietary products and marketing them as treatments for a number of diseases, the Justice Department said.

In a complaint filed in the Cedar Rapids Federal Court, prosecutors claim Iowa Select Herbs sells adulterated and misbranded dietary supplements through its own website, as well as those of eBay and Amazon.

These include products the company markets as fighting sexually-transmitted diseases, heart disease, malaria and cancer. Many of these supplements are made primarily of Echinacea, elderberry, papaya leaf and nettle.

The Justice Department said Food and Drug Administration initially contacted Iowa Select Herbs in April 2014, informing it that its "Flax Seed, Holy Basil, Papya Leaf Extract, and Ginkgo Leaf Extract were being unlawfully marketed in such a way that "cause them to be drugs", and that these unverified therapeutic claims were posted on the company's website.

Inspectors visited Iowa Select Herbs' facility in August 2014, and deemed its products "adulterated" as defined by the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act because the supplements were manufactured under conditions that failed to ensure the their safety.

The Justice Department is asking U.S. District Judge Edward McManus to impose a permanent injunction against the company and its officers, preventing them from continuing to distribute their products, and to award it the costs associated with the investigation and any future monitoring that its deemed necessary.

In announcing the filing of a civil complaint against the company, the Justice Department emphasized that its complaint is "merely a set of allegations that, if the case were to proceed to trial, the government would need to prove by a preponderance of the evidence."

Representatives of Iowa Select Herbs declined to comment on the lawsuit.

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