Steve Mister, president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, is annoyed when he hears sports leaders point their fingers at his multibillion-dollar company for their steroid problems and said that large percentages of his company’s products are tainted. But Mister rebutted this claim and said that the study claiming 25 percent of supplements are tainted by steroids is misleading because it sampled fewer than 60 of the thousands of products on the market. The said study was conducted by HFL, a British company and was released on 2007. The study disclosed that it looked specifically for products used by athletes that were “not believed to regularly carry out banned substance screening as part of their routine quality control processes.”

The study was first posted by USA Today and The Associated Press, was included in the speech last week by Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), who urged attorneys general to use state laws to fill in gaps in what many see as last federal oversight of the supplement industry. To counter this statement, Mister said on Monday that laws are thorough while conceding enforcement could be better. According to him, there is already a Food and Drug Administration regulation that requires manufacturers to follow tougher testing practices and it will be expanded to every supplement makers with more than 20 employees.

Mister said that “there aren’t enough inspectors to do all the work.” “You get things like bad peanut butter, pistachios, spinach, and that deflects FDA resources. But the FDA has done a number of inspections and has a pretty robust inspection system in place for supplements,” he added. Though Mister admitted that his industry also has some flaws he also said that it hardly deserves the blame it has received in recent months.

He added that there are “bad actors” in his supplement industry and also called for them to be punished. But the supplement business is not dominated by people who try to break the law and ruin sports, just like many of its detractors claim.

New CEO at USA Track and Field Doug Logan also criticized the supplement industry by saying that it “has been assisting in braiding the noose” that is choking the life out of track and field. Mister however countered that “they have a problem in their industry because they have a lot of athletes who will do anything to win. When they point the finger at our industry, it’s a way to deflect criticism away from their athletes and try to put it on someone else.”

According to Tygart, the anti-doping industry wishes athletes would not depend on supplements at all but said that‘s unrealistic. USADA has hotlines that would help athletes determine the supplements which are clean and contain banned substances. There are companies like NSF International and National Centre for Drug Free Sport that test supplements and guarantee consumers that the products they purchase and take are clean.

Mister offered advice to every customer to be savvy on purchasing supplements. “Take advantage of certification programs, look for seals of approvals.” “Don’t buy products that are making claims that sound too good to be true and don’t buy products where models look pumped up on something that’s not natural,” he added.

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