Consumer Labs latest results for Ashwagandha are disappointing. Nootropic Depot, LEF, Swanson, others fail.

They should contact the brands to educate themselves on how to properly test. They didn't contact us at all. They didn't ask what monograph we use for our standard. They didn't ask if there was a lab they could send the samples to that could run the method, or if we could share the methods with one of their labs. They didn't even let us know that they were going to be posting results showing we failed on a test that they have been made aware in the past is not looking at the whole picture. Even CNN contacts the subject of a story before they post it, to see if they want to comment on it. Even the biased media tries to actually do the bare minimum to ensure they are not putting out libel. You want to know my theory as to why Consumer Lab doesn't? They are a for-profit company that survives by brands paying them. There have been claims in the past that Consumer Lab purposely puts out failing results without warning to incentivize brands to work with them and pay them to do the testing, so they will give you a chance to respond to results before bad ones go out. We have never paid Consumer Lab a cent. Pay us, or you could have bad results come out at any time without notice; before a holiday weekend when we know your people are not in to quickly respond to it. You might think that is a conspiracy theory, but it has been claimed by industry organizations in the past.

Now to play devil's advocate a bit on my end, I wouldn't be so upset if they had just decided to rank products with the USP monograph. Make that clear to everyone that they are only looking at 8 withanolides, because those are the methods they have, so these rankings are based off that one snapshot. I would have a friendly disagreement with them on monographs and testing, but it wouldn't be heated like this. The reason it is so heated is that they unequivocally stated that we FAILED our label claims... when they didn't even test for the things we base our claim on. That's the real issue here. They put out language saying we failed for claims, and then they make consumers PAY to see the full results! Most people don't pay, so they just see that we failed. They don't see the details surrounding that. That wrong. The other sad part is that if we just payed CL as a brand, it likely wouldn't have happened. They would have given us the opportunity to discuss with them the results. However, we don't pay them, so we have to deal with this. What does that sound like to you?