NSF Dietary Supplement Ingredient Certification

NSF is known for certifying facilities to the NSF/ANSI 455 Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) standard, and for certifying products to NSF/ANSI 173 Contents Certified and NSF 306 Certified for Sport^®. But did you know NSF also offers certification specifically for dietary supplement ingredients? This certification is commonly called 173DI and is offered under a section of the NSF/ANSI 173 Contents Certified product certification standard.

To attain 173DI certification, a company should first achieve GMP certification, generally under NSF/ANSI 455-2 GMP for Dietary Supplements. This GMP certification is aligned with requirements from the industry, regulators and retailers, and was developed to help manufacturers meet these requirements and, hopefully, reduce their audit burden.

Companies have the option to attain 173DI certification without GMP certification, but this limits a company to certifying only ingredients. It cannot claim certification for a finished product/dietary supplement.

Another option, from a GMP standpoint, is to obtain GMP registration through NSF’s 173GMPDI audit, which covers a section of NSF/ANSI 173, but this audit is available only to ingredient manufacturers.

The 173DI certification mark may be used only on raw ingredient products that have been certified to the dietary supplement standard NSF/ANSI 173 and/or on products certified to the functional foods, beverages and ingredients guideline NSF 229.

NSF 173DI certification is not transferable from an ingredient supplier to a finished product manufacturer, meaning that the finished product cannot claim NSF certification based solely on a supplier’s NSF 173DI certification.

The 173DI certification mark, seen here, appears on the final certificate of analysis. The mark may not be used on a finished product label.