What Does 3rd-Party Testing Mean?

Most companies in the wellness industry, which is my niche, don’t get their products validated by 3rd-party sources. They’re not required to by law. Plus there is the risk that their products may not perform well under rigorous testing. That would undermine consumer confidence and competitors would jump at the opportunity to point out where this product fell short.

On the flip side, a few companies do get testing done. So what? The whole point of independent testing is to have an unbiased team of experts evaluate a product and get those results out for the rest of us to see. Even in this, there are loopholes depending on where the testing is conducted. In some scenarios the company can invoke a 1st right of refusal if they don’t like how the tests came out. This means they can insist the data gets tossed out. It’s not illegal but it’s not ethical either. Wouldn’t you want to know if a clinical study revealed harmful ingredients were in a product? Call me crazy, but I’d like to know what I’m eating or applying to my body.

The good news is there is a path to transparency and reliability thanks to prestigious universities such as the University of Pittsburgh, Harvard U, Arizona State or the University of Chicago, and that’s a short list. These schools are highly respected for compiling reliable clinical data. To backpedal and assemble biased data would tarnish their reputation, to put this lightly. They stand behind by their findings. The company can’t cry foul if testing reveals their products aren’t the greatest thing since sliced bread. In the same spirit of transparency, the data is submitted to medical journals for publication. No journal is going to publish biased data. Again, reputations are at stake here. All of these checkpoints ensure that what you and I read is irrefutable science.