OpTree

USANA Health Sciences president, Dave Wentz has just been elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Direct Selling Association. The announcement was made last Monday during the DSA’s Annual meeting which took place in Phoenix, AZ.

Wentz has been an active member of the DSA over the years and has served the organization in many capacities, including Chairman of the DSA Education Foundation, Chairman of the 2008 Annual meeting, and served as Vice Chairman from 2006-2008

The Direct Selling Association is a national trade organization that monitors and upholds the standards of the industry. The DSA has over 200 member companies who sell products and provide services which are all sold through direct sales channels, directly to consumers.

We think this is a great move by the DSA - although not sure why Wentz is taking on this role at this time when he is trying to take his company private and the nuisance of Minkow driving his company nuts. While we are not sure of what day-to-day operational role Wentz will fill, it does help legitimize the DSA a bit more by having him serve as Chairman.

Wentz’s term as chairman will last one year, and he is looking forward to assuming the role and helping the DSA further their goals within the industry. “I am excited to serve an organization that plays such an important role in maintaining the strength and principles of the direct selling industry,” Wentz said. “The DSA is made up of an incredible array of companies offering excellent products and services to millions of independent distributors and customers throughout the United States. I look forward to serving the DSA and furthering its role in guiding our great industry.”

Popularity: 15% [?]

Herbalife released an official statement this weekend rebutting the claims made by the “Fraud Institute of America” saying that independent lab tests have confirmed that Herbalife products do NOT contain unsafe levels of lead.

In a recent compliant made by Barry Minkow and his Fraud Discovery Institute, Minkow cited two studies which claimed that 6 products sold by Herbalife contained dangerous amounts of Lead. Herbalife called that information “inaccurate and misleading” and went on to say that “there was never any health or safety issue with Herbalife products. The statement was sent out via e-mail.

Herbalife Chief Scientific Officer Steve Henig said in the statement that many natural and processed foods, “as well as our products, which are made with natural ingredients, contain extremely small amounts of naturally occurring lead that can be detected by today’s highly sensitive analytical methods but are insignificant in posing any risk to consumers.”

Herbalife has retested its products at independent labs in both the US (Covance) and Europe (Eurofins) and all products were proved to be compliant with all laws and regulations pertaining to health and safety standards.

The complaint made by the FDI and Minkow, was supposedly sent to the California’s Attorney Generals office, but Herbalife Spokeswoman, Barbara Henderson has said that to the best of her knowledge, nobody at the company has been contacted by the state of California, but added, that if contacted, the company would be happy to speak to anyone.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Fraud Discovery Institute is at it again…..The “institute” has just released a study claiming that the Nu Skin Nu Color Replenishing Lipstick in Amber Spice contained very high levels of lead.

The testing was done by Safecosmetics.org -a non-profit consumer safety organization that aims to protect the public from dangerous lead-filled cosmetics. This is also the same lab that reported just months ago about the high levels of lead in various Herbalife products. And of course, both studies were funded by Barry Minkow, the founder of the FDI and advocate against all MLM companies.

To establish a baseline for what constitutes dangerous lead levels, FDI compared the finding in the Nu Skin lipstick against test results of other lipsticks and found that that Amber spice contain 1.12 ppm of lead, far above what other lipsticks contained.

Stacy Malkan, communications director for Safe Cosmetics.org stated that the lead in the Nu Skin lipstick appears to be almost twice as high as the most lead-contaminated brand tested by SafeCosmetics.org.

“The FDA has no established lead law for lipstick, but I think that it is safe to assume that Nu Skin probably does not want the distinction of being the most lead-contaminated of lipsticks tested by the non-profit organization seeking to protect consumers from dangerous products,” said Barry Minkow, co-founder of the Fraud Discovery Institute.

Minkow would also like to remind everyone that although his primary focus is annoying and attempting to take down Herbalife, he will also continue to try to take down and be a thorn in the side of other MLM companies as well, hence the Lipstick studies of Nu Skin cosmetics. Nu Skin has not released an official comment on the study, but we will keep you posted on any new developments.

Popularity: 4% [?]