Manufacturers: How to Dispute Results

The Consumer Wellness Center is open to science-based discussions about testing results. We strive to be accurate in our analytical testing as well as in our communication of such results to the public.

There are two options available to manufacturers who dispute our published results:

  1. File a DISPUTE with the CWC (which costs you nothing).
  2. Request a RE-TEST of your product (which also costs you nothing).

Note: The CWC is not a commercial operation and does not conduct or solicit commercial lab testing on behalf of manufacturers. All our testing is conducted at no cost to manufacturers.

How to File a Dispute:

If you are a manufacturer, retailer or representative of a product we have tested, and you dispute the test results we have published, you may contact us with a dispute using the following process: (there is no charge for any of this, but please have patience with our process as we are a non-profit)

  1. Use another ISO-accredited laboratory to conduct your own testing of your product. Use appropriate instruments with the necessary detection sensitivity, such as mass spec single quad or triple quad systems. Make sure the testing covers all the appropriate categories such as pesticides, antibiotics, industrial chemicals and so on.
  2. If the test results you receive from that laboratory are substantially difference from our published results, and you wish to dispute our results, you may email your dispute to [email protected]. Please include your own lab test results as an attached PDF, and also include the product name, lot number you tested, and manufacturer's name. Your lab tests must state which analytes were tested, and they must state the LoD and LoQ values for the instruments and analytes in question. To repeat, the lab you use must be ISO accredited, or your dispute will be rejected.
  3. We will review your dispute and take the appropriate action. In many cases, we may re-test your product in our own lab and attempt to confirm or rule out our initial test results.
  4. Because we strive for 100% accuracy and transparency, in the rare cases where we are in error, we will issue a correction and update the results table on our website(s).

A few additional notes:

  • We do not offer commercial lab testing services on HPLC-MS-TOF testing for food contaminates, so we cannot be "hired" to conduct such tests for you. (Our instruments are fully occupied testing off-the-shelf products for public research.)
  • We cannot accept product samples shipped to us directly from you because we cannot trust manufacturers to ship us the same products they are shipping to retailers. We only acquire products from the same retailers used by the public. If appropriate, we may re-purchase a new product from a manufacturer for follow-up testing. This would be done at our own cost.
  • Legal threats against the Consumer Wellness Center for conducting science in the public interest will not be constructive. As a non-profit organization testing off-the-shelf products for public safety and knowledge, the CWC has a strong legal team and exhaustive legal precedent to conduct such testing and share results with the public without fear of being harassed, intimidated or censored by product manufacturers. Those product manufacturers who do not like the CWC's results are advised to either dispute the lab testing via the process described above, or improve their product formulations to eliminate whatever offending chemicals were detected.
  • The CWC will entertain requests to re-test products after a significant reformulation has taken place and new production lots appear on retail shelves. If you would like the CWC to re-test your product, please submit a re-test request to [email protected] and we will review your request and consider its merits.

Thank you for your patience and support of the Consumer Wellness Center and our goal to publicly publish lab testing results for off-the-shelf products.

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