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Quality & Safe
TLDR: We ensure the best quality-to-price ratio by partnering with ISO 9001 and USDA Organic certified suppliers, conducting 6-18 tests per ingredient to validate purity, traceability, and bioavailability. Our team personally uses the products, guaranteeing trust and effectiveness.
10 min. read
Written by
Guang Jin
Published
Fri, 20Sep 2024
Quality You Can Trust: How ISO 9001 and USDA Organic Certifications Shape Our Supplements
In the world of dietary supplements, trust and quality are paramount. As a brand committed to delivering the best to our customers, we’ve made sure that every step of our process—from sourcing ingredients to final production—meets the highest standards. By partnering with ISO 9001 and USDA Organic certified suppliers, we ensure that our supplements are not just effective but also safe, consistent, and ethically produced.
However, you might wonder why we haven’t opted for even more stringent certifications like GMP or ISO 22000. The reason is that ISO 9001 and USDA Organic provide the most balanced combination of high-quality oversight while also ensuring flexibility in sourcing and production. These certifications ensure:
Ingredient Traceability: With ISO 9001, our suppliers have robust processes in place for tracking each ingredient from its source, guaranteeing consistent quality without overcomplicating supply chains.
Natural and Sustainable Ingredients: USDA Organic certifies that your supplements are grown and processed without harmful chemicals or GMOs, aligning with our commitment to natural and clean products.
While more stringent certifications such as GMP or ISO 22000 focus on specific industries, they can also add unnecessary complexity and costs that don't necessarily translate to better quality for the consumer. Instead, we chose certifications that offer the right balance of rigor and practicality, ensuring our supplements are safe, effective, and accessible without compromising on quality or ethical sourcing.
Additionally, while we continually search for the most exciting and scientifically supported ingredients—such as Polypodium Leucotomos for UV protection—finding ingredients with the right purity, efficacy, and affordable pricing becomes increasingly challenging under more stringent certifications. Polypodium, for example, must meet purity and effectiveness standards while also being accessible to consumers at a reasonable cost. More rigorous certifications can complicate this process, making it difficult to find top-quality ingredients like Polypodium at the desired price point. This would result in much higher product costs without necessarily increasing the quality or benefits for you.
By choosing ISO 9001 and USDA Organic, we maintain a high level of trust, transparency, and safety, while also being able to offer you supplements that meet your health and wellness goals without inflating costs.
But let’s break it down further.
1. What is ISO 9001?
ISO 9001 is an internationally recognized standard for quality management systems (QMS) that covers a wide range of processes and ensures that organizations consistently meet customer and regulatory requirements. At its core, ISO 9001 is designed to improve efficiency, product quality, and customer satisfaction. But what does this mean in terms of the supplements we produce?
When we partner with ISO 9001-certified suppliers, we ensure that they adhere to rigorous, well-documented procedures that go beyond the surface level of quality control. One of the most critical aspects of this certification is ingredient traceability.
Ingredient Traceability
Traceability is a key requirement under ISO 9001, ensuring that every ingredient in our supplements can be traced back to its source. This means that from the moment an ingredient is harvested or produced, its journey through the supply chain is meticulously documented. Traceability includes:
Source documentation: Where and how each raw material is sourced, ensuring ethical and sustainable practices. We have access to all of these.
Batch tracking: Every batch of ingredients is tracked from the supplier to the final product, ensuring we can pinpoint any issues that may arise in specific batches.
Supply chain transparency: Knowing each step of the journey ensures that if any quality issues occur, we can quickly trace them back to their origin and resolve them effectively.
This detailed level of oversight is vital in guaranteeing that what goes into your supplements is safe, ethical, and exactly as labeled.
Consistency and Safety
ISO 9001-certified suppliers also adhere to strict quality control processes that ensure consistency in every batch. Whether it’s ensuring the potency of an ingredient like L-Glutathione or the purity of hyaluronic acid, the certification guarantees that every batch meets the same high standards. This reduces variability, ensuring that each supplement you take delivers the same effective dosage.
Continuous Improvement
ISO 9001 also emphasizes continuous improvement, meaning suppliers are not only required to meet current standards but are also committed to ongoing refinement of their processes. Whether it’s adopting new testing methods, improving production efficiency, or ensuring better resource management, the goal is to deliver higher quality products with each iteration.
By partnering with ISO 9001-certified suppliers, we ensure that every step of production—from ingredient sourcing to manufacturing and testing—meets internationally recognized standards. This means fewer risks of contamination, stronger guarantees of quality, and full transparency about where our ingredients come from.
2. USDA Organic Certification: Why It Matters
In addition to quality control, we are committed to ensuring that the ingredients in our products are sourced ethically and sustainably. That's where our USDA Organic certification comes in. This certification guarantees that our ingredients are grown and processed without the use of harmful chemicals, synthetic pesticides, or GMOs, which are common in conventionally farmed products.
But is this all that matters? The USDA Organic certification goes beyond just banning harmful substances. It also ensures:
Soil Health: Organic farming methods emphasize practices that enrich the soil, such as crop rotation, composting, and the avoidance of synthetic fertilizers. This helps maintain healthy ecosystems, preserving long-term agricultural sustainability.
Biodiversity: By avoiding harmful pesticides and fertilizers, organic farming supports greater biodiversity. This means healthier plant life, more resilient crops, and protection of pollinators like bees and butterflies, which are crucial for food production.
Non-GMO Guarantee: USDA Organic standards prohibit the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), ensuring that the food and supplements you consume are closer to their natural form.
While USDA Organic certification matters greatly, it’s not the only factor in creating a high-quality supplement. Bioavailability, minimal effective dose, and ethical sourcing all play important roles in ensuring the best product. But USDA Organic certification is a critical foundation, as it reflects our commitment to providing clean, natural, and sustainable ingredients that support both your health and the environment.
When we choose suppliers with the USDA Organic seal, we're not just selecting a product; we're choosing a commitment to the planet, ethical sourcing, and your well-being.
3. Understanding Quality and Safety on an Ingredient Level.
Quality control certifications are important, but what truly matters is the rigorous testing conducted at the ingredient level. This process ensures the integrity, purity, and safety of each key ingredient in our products, which is crucial for your health and well-being. For every compound we use, we request detailed test methods from our suppliers to verify quality. These tests can range from 6 to 18 different assessments per ingredient, depending on the complexity and sensitivity of the compound, ensuring that nothing short of excellence makes it into our supplements.
Some tests are relatively simple but highly effective. For example, a visual test can help assess whether Polypodium Leucotomos powder is still fresh. Typically, it should be light brown or tan-colored. If it degrades or goes bad, it may darken to a deeper brown or even take on a grayish hue, signaling it’s no longer safe or effective to use. A quick visual inspection can provide an early indication of quality degradation. Of course, this is just one part of our testing process—additional tests are also performed to ensure the overall quality and integrity of the ingredient.
Other ingredients, like Astaxanthin, require far more detailed testing due to its delicate nature. Astaxanthin is often produced through fermentation with yeast, which introduces additional variables. For this compound, we ensure the supplier's product passes through a series of meticulous tests, including:
Heavy metal tests to ensure no harmful contaminants like lead or mercury are present.
Microbial tests for yeast and E. Coli to confirm the product is free from harmful microorganisms.
Purity and potency tests to verify the actual concentration of astaxanthin in the final product.
These tests are crucial in ensuring the safety, efficacy, and consistency of our supplements. By demanding thorough testing from our suppliers, we can confidently stand by the quality of every ingredient we use, ensuring that what you consume is both effective and safe.
4. The Final Certification: Our Team & Professionals Use It Too.
Certifications and testing are crucial, but our commitment goes beyond the technicalities. At the core of what we do, the most important question we ask ourselves is: do we believe in this product enough to use it ourselves? The answer is a resounding yes.
Our entire team—including their families—uses the same supplements we create. In fact, the idea for our UV protection supplement stemmed from a personal experience. My brother, who has skin sensitivity and couldn’t tolerate traditional sunblock, started facing higher incidences of skin issues as he aged. Over time, his sun sensitivity became a deterrence to outdoor activities.
That all changed when we developed this supplement for UV protection. Although life can get busy, it has given us the confidence to enjoy the outdoors again when we do have time. Personally, I’ve been using the supplement for months now and continue to monitor my health closely with regular full-body check-ups, including blood work, to ensure it’s working effectively. All data accessible to you upon request.
And it’s not just us—we’ve also consulted professionals like aestheticians who believe in the product and use it themselves. Their insights helped shape the supplement to ensure it works for a range of skin types and needs.
This personal investment highlights the trust we place in our products and underscores the care we put into every stage of development. When the people who create the product use it themselves—and share it with their loved ones—you can be sure that safety, efficacy, and quality are always top priorities.
After all, we’re not just making supplements for you—we’re making them for us, too.
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