In a bold announcement yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration decided to do its job…. In a bold announcement yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration decided to do its job.

The FDA, a regulatory agency in charge of insuring that pharmaceuticals are safe and the meatpacking industry doesn’t look to Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” for its practices, will now start to evaluate, and possibly regulate, dietary supplements.

Before this announcement, such supplements could be marketed, with labels cautioning that they hadn’t been evaluated by the FDA, and taken off the shelves only if the supplement was proven sufficiently harmful.

With this announcement comes the long-needed decision to regulate dietary, herbal and natural supplements – the last of these being the most vaguely named because, after all, arsenic is an element, and it doesn’t get much more natural than that.

Resultantly, the FDA is now going stop that “Neon – it’ll give you a healthy glow” supplement campaign before it starts. Good for the administration, doing its job and preventing needless kidney failure and death.

Introducing legitimate science with all its rules and regulations – like, for instance, peer-reviewed studies, risk assessment, testing for possible side effects, and labeling products properly – into the supplement industry can only be for the common good. Until now, the public has been the testing ground for many supplements efficacy and safety, which is unacceptable.

This announcement comes in tragedy’s wake, because, before these regulations could be made, some of these supplements had to be sufficiently dangerous to ban. Such ex post facto regulation comes after Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Belcher’s death, which has been linked to ephedra, a popular weight-loss supplement. Hopefully, these regulations will prevent other such needless deaths.

These regulations are especially necessary when other pharmaceuticals have been denied or delayed because of insufficient or inconclusive tests, but the supplements allowed on the market.

According to Reuters, Michael McGuffin, president of the American Herbal Products Association, approves of these measures, saying he wants the bad players out of the game. It’s about time that these products are subject to the same thorough investigations as regular drugs – after all, it’s only natural.