Below are Frequently Asked Questions specific to plant-based products for our Standards program and the Natural Products Expo Application Review Process. For more details about Expo Exhibitor Registration, please consult the Exhibitor Resources available on our Expo sites:
Products labeled as vegan indicate that all the ingredients are processed using no animal by-products. For example, sweeteners may not be filtered or processed with bone char, prebiotics and probiotics must be cultured on or with a culture medium free of animal products or by-products, and liquids may not be filtered, de-foamed or clarified with animal products. On the other hand, plant-based products do not have restrictions on where they are processed, for instance, in a facility that also processes animal-derived ingredients or products. Vegan products should not be processed in a facility that also processes animal products to avoid cross-contamination.
No. Honey is produced by bees and therefore it is not plant derived. If you would like to use descriptive words about a product containing small amounts of animal-derived ingredients, we suggest using terms like “plant-focused” or “plant-forward” or declaring a percentage of the product that is derived from plants.
This will depend upon what type of non-plant ingredients in the product. If the ingredients are synthetically derived, according to our guidelines, the product should not claim to be plant-based. If the ingredients are salt, water and/or other non-synthetically derived ingredients, then according to our guidelines, we would not dispute a plant-based claim.
A statement of source is from what an ingredient is derived and/or how the ingredient is produced. For example, ascorbic acid can be extracted from a variety of food sources such as oranges (ex. Ascorbic acid (acerola)) or can be synthetic through commercial production (ex. Ascorbic acid (fermentation)).