Fabricant to leave NPA for FDA, CRN’s Shao heading to HerbalifeFabricant to leave NPA for FDA, CRN’s Shao heading to Herbalife

Two leading U.S. dietary supplement trade associations will say goodbye to senior members of their team this month. Daniel Fabricant, PhD, vice president of global government and scientific affairs at the Natural Products Association (NPA), announced February 2 that he is leaving NPA at the end of February to join the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the director of the agency’s Division of Dietary Supplement Programs.

This FDA position had been held by Vasilios Frankos, PhD, who left the agency in early 2010 to join the supplement company Herbalife as senior vice president of product compliance and safety.

Herbalife, based in Los Angeles and one of the largest nutritional network marketing companies in the world, will also soon employ Andrew Shao, PhD, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN). Shao will join Herbalife on March 7 as vice president of global product science and safety, serving under Frankos.

Prior to joining CRN in 2005, Shao was a senior scientist at GNC and a member of the research and development team at Kemin Health.

Fabricant helped lead lobbying victories for NPA, supplement industry

Fabricant joined NPA five years ago. In 2009, he served as the trade association’s interim executive director and CEO following the departure of David Seckman. John Gay was hired as the NPA’s current executive director and CEO in October 2009.

Cara Welch, PhD, and Liz Hurst will continue to manage and oversee NPA's collective scientific, regulatory and government affairs portfolio.

“I am grateful for the opportunities I had at NPA and feel immensely proud of all that has been achieved during my time at the association on the scientific, regulatory and government affairs fronts,” Fabricant wrote in a letter to colleagues and industry friends. “I wish the association continued success in the future and want to thank my excellent team for their great work and support.”

Along with CRN and the other dietary supplement trade associations, NPA was involved in several successful lobbying efforts last year that resulted in the defeat of Arizona Senator John McCain’s short-lived Dietary Supplement Safety Act in March and passage of a supplement-friendly food safety law in January 2011.

As NPA’s Gay told NewHope360 last month, the association had been working on helping to shape food safety legislation over several congresses. “Daniel Fabricant deserves credit for the work on that bill,” Gay said.