Ok, so some people want an update on the Vitamin C post. It’s a bit dated, so this will help update the list. For those of you who do not know, China produces the bulk of vitamin C in the world. They got that way by the government of China subsidizing the production cost of vitamin C, allowing them to undercut everyone else on the market until they drove everyone else out of the market. For your information, that’s a violation of the WTO of which they are a member of and are not suppose to do such unfair trade practices.
This is in an update, so go read the old post and the comments and then read this one. Don’t expect a long list since almost ALL vitamin C sold in the US, comes from China. In all honesty, get your vitamin C from natural sources! The Chinese in a Wall Street Journal article defended their practices of price fixing, they don’t want to play fair and they have proven to not care about your health.
My best advice, advocate at the local, state and federal level for country of origin labeling for all products sold in the US. Then you will know what you are getting and can make a real informed choice.
Here’s what I have found:
1 Comment
September 20, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I have been hunting for vitamin c guaranteed not to have been made in China to take myself and to give to my pets. I also found that DSM Nutritional Products manufactures vitamin c in Scotland (the only maker left in Europe that I know of now). They closed their plant in the US in 2006 and consolidated operations in their more efficient Scottish plant. However, DSM does have offices in the US in New Jersey and does sell to vitamin/supplement companies in the US. It takes a little sleuthing to find one, but I have. Douglas Laboratories buys the DSM Quali-C (Scottish made vitamin c) but sells only to health care care professionals, not *directly* to the public. Douglas Labs website is here:
http://www.douglaslabs.com/Douglas_Intro_site/index.cfm
A simple Google search will turn up some of the online sellers who have health care professionals (like chiropractors, doctors, or pharmacists) on staff and carry Douglas Labs vitamin c. I contacted 2 of them, neither of which I’d ever done business with. One in California:
http://www.costlessvitamin.com/
One in Florida:
https://www.professionalsupplementcenter.com/Default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
I emailed the one in Florida, and they went the extra mile for me in customer service and called Douglas Labs and confirmed that their vitamin c was indeed from Scotland. So I decided to order from Professional Supplement Center. I only ordered one bottle of 1000mg vitamin c tablets for $10 total. Free delivery. IMHO that is pretty competitive with the prices of Chinese vitamin c, so I don’t know why all the vitamin/supplement companies in the US are so set on buying ONLY Chinese vitamin c.
In the last few weeks I have called or emailed MANY vitamin/supplement companies and people would be amazed at the justifications they have given me for their getting their vitamin c from China–when all I asked was WHERE they got there vitamin c. I said I was looking for vitamin c not from China and in some cases got these really long rather pompous email messages back, basically telling me I was wrong for wanting anything different than what they had!
If anyone wants a list of all those I’ve contacted, I’d be happy to post it!!! This whole process has been VERY enlightening. Hey, one company even told me when I asked why they didn’t put country of origin of the ingredients on the label said, “because we don’t have to.” Nice huh?