Controlling Quality in Fish Oil Production (Fish Oil Producers Confront a Sea of QC Issues)

Despite any environmental laws, there is little way for anyone to clear the fish populations of contaminants, which can start as air pollution (or result from natural processes such as forest fires) and settle into the world's waterways, eventually seeping into marine life. Thus, fish oil producers must accept this issue of contamination and deal with it via technology, such as distillation.

However, this was not a widespread practice years ago. According to Adam Ismail, executive director of the Global Organization for EPA and DHA (GOED), the fish oil industry got together seven years ago, recognizing quality issues such as contamination could become a concern for their market in the future. The international band of fish oil companies helped create a Voluntary Omega-3 Monograph, under the auspices of a Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) omega-3 working group. In 2006, they created GOED as an official trade association, replacing the working group, with a charge of furthering the quality of the fish oil market via expansion of the voluntary monograph. The list of founding members reads like a who's who of omegas—including DSM, Croda, Ocean Nutrition Canada (ONC), EPAX, Lipid Nutrition, Marine Nutraceuticals, Martek Biosciences and OmegaPure.

Ismail gives credit to these companies and others that have joined the pursuit of fish oil quality for virtually ridding the market of contaminants. William Rowe of Nutrasource, which provides third-party lab testing across the entire fish oil product chain, agreed the industry stepped up when it came under pressure years ago. "The processing and technology in use now for fish and marine oils are so sophisticated," he said. "There are fantastic technical methods companies employ to remove contaminants, if [toxins] are even in there to begin with."

As evidence of this progress, ConsumerLab.com recently conducted its biggest test on fish oils to date, finding all 50 of the tested supplements, foods and beverages containing fish oil ingredients were found safely free from heavy metal and other contamination. Moreover, the products, which contained between 16 mg to over 1,000 mg per serving, all met label claims for EPA and DHA, without any signs of spoilage.

"We've seen multiple times in the natural products industry how one negative media report can have a great affect on the market," Ismail said. "The way the fish oil industry has handled the contamination quality issue should be a case study for segments of the natural products industry."