Our Quality Assurance Philosophy
At Nature's Sunshine, we believe that if you want a job done right, you do it yourself. That's why the vast majority of our products are produced in our Spanish Fork, Utah, manufacturing facility. We take the responsibility to develop, manufacture and test our raw materials and products.

We believe that in order to maintain our position as the quality leader in the industry, we must continue to provide the finest herbs and nutritional supplements available. The challenge we face is ensuring that the goodness naturally found in plants is preserved throughout the entire production process. Our goal is to rise to meet that challenge daily.

As we strive to live our motto, "Quality, Service, Integrity," we find the best way to produce a premium product is to start with premium ingredients.

Only the Best Will Do
To create the finest products, we begin with the finest raw herb material--planted, harvested and supplied to us by dependable vendors. Our herbs are grown in choice fields all over the world and harvested according to strict NSP specifications.

Nature's Sunshine employs the most experienced, trustworthy people in the industry. All told, the Quality Assurance department's knowledgeable, dedicated employees have more than 170 combined years of experience and training in quality assurance.

NSP maintains laboratories with the most sophisticated, technical equipment available to conduct vital purity and potency evaluations. We continually test materials and products throughout the entire manufacturing process.

The Facts on Nature's Sunshine's Quality Assurance Approximately 5 percent of all incoming raw materials are rejected by QA for quality reasons. NSP's QA experts have more than 170 years of combined training and experience in their fields. NSP receives approximately 300 raw material lots each month totaling close to 2 million pounds of plant material and herb powder each year. NSP spends close to $1 million on quality assurance annually (not including equipment purchases).

In all, Nature's Sunshine spends close to $1 million annually to ensure that the products we offer are the cleanest, purest products on the market.

QA Update
At NSP we're always on the lookout for new ways to improve and maintain our quality control; for example, we recently began using High Performance Liquid Chromatography to examine the ephedrine content in ma huang plant material. Using HPLCs, we are able to show that the ma huang in Chinese Fen-Chi, Thermo-Chi and Nature's Chi has not been adulterated with pseudoephedrine or any synthetic ephedrine, allowing NSP to supply a safer product.

As another example, before manufacturing the Liquid Morinda juice, Quality Assurance personnel test the incoming Morinda fruit to verify that the fruit lot is the correct species and that it contains the beneficial ingredients NSP consumers require.

In order to protect consumers, the federal government has provided regulations for product manufacturing. These "Good Manufacturing Practices" represent a minimum-quality requirement. Nature's Sunshine is proud to meet and, in most cases, far exceed the government's guidelines for manufacturing health products.

"Handling Rejection"
Nature's Sunshine goes the extra mile to make sure only select raw materials go into every product we manufacture. Even though we have a reputation in the industry as being hard to please, we have had a few strange things come through the doors.

Quality Assurance has rejected shipments of herbs from Eastern Europe because we detected trace levels of radiation in herb lots, a consequence of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. In fact, NSP had difficulty finding a good alternative source of chickweed after the accident because much of the world's supply is grown in that area. However, we did locate a more reliable source of this herb in a different part of the world.

On one occasion, NSP rejected a shipment of mullein because our tests revealed the herb we received was not mullein. We have also rejected batches of St. John's Wort herb material because our QA tests found no hypericin content (the key component in St. John's Wort). On rare occasions we have discovered other foreign debris in raw materials, including nails, wood and a glove. These shipments were all rejected.

When Nature's Sunshine rejects an herb lot, it is returned to the vendor. What vendors do with each particular lot is unknown. Some vendors may sell rejected lots to other manufacturers. Regardless of where rejected batches end up, the message we send to our vendors is clear: Nature's Sunshine has the highest quality standards of all of their customers.

Being the Best Means...
Nature's Sunshine products are the finest in the world. What does that mean to you?

• It means having full confidence and trust in the products you use and give to your friends and loved ones.

• It means achieving the best possible results because you are using the most pure, potent herbs on the market.

• It means you can have the utmost confidence in NSP products as you sell and use them. When you trust NSP's quality reputation, it becomes that much easier to share the products with your friends and family.

The bottom line: Our reputation for premium quality products translates to more satisfied customers, fantastic word-of-mouth advertising, brand loyalty and fewer returns.

Quality is a treasure; at Nature's Sunshine you will always find superior quality.  

Page 2  FDA Plantain Scare!

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REF:  Sunshine HORIZONS Special Opportunity Issue Vol. 22 No. 9 September 1997 Page 4