Testing and quality
Ten marks are shown with this product. Three of them are about manufacturing, and not one of the ten is a test of what is in the bottle. No third-party test document of any kind was supplied to this website.
GMP certification, FDA facility registration and a manufactured-in-the-USA mark are all real things, and all three describe a plant rather than a product. None of them reports on the contents of a capsule, and the FDA does not approve dietary supplements before they are marketed.
No certificate of analysis, no assay, no heavy metal result and no microbiological result was supplied to this site. A certificate reference number was. This page sets out what each mark covers, what a credible test package would look like, and why this category in particular attracts the question.
What a mark on a bottle can and cannot be
There are three different kinds of statement in a row of roundels, and they get read as though they were one kind.
- A certification
- An outside body assessed something against a published standard and issued a certificate. GMP certification is one of these. What was assessed is a facility.
- A registration
- A filing with an authority. FDA facility registration is one of these. Filing is not assessment and it is not approval.
- A seller’s claim
- A statement the seller makes about its own product. Natural, non-GMO, dairy free and money-back satisfaction are all of this kind. Some are easy to believe and none of them was certified by anybody named here.
None of the three kinds is a test of the material in the capsule. That would be a certificate of analysis, and it is a document rather than a roundel. None was supplied for this product; a reference number was, and batch and lot sets out the difference.
GMP certification
Good Manufacturing Practice certification is held by a facility. An auditor visits a plant and assesses how it runs: written procedures, staff training, equipment cleaning, how raw materials are received and quarantined, how batches are documented, how complaints are handled.
What it does cover
That the plant has systems, that those systems are written down, and that an auditor found them being followed on the day of the audit. It is a genuine and useful thing, and a plant without it is a plant you would want to know more about.
What it does not cover
- The contents of this bottle. GMP describes a process, not a batch.
- Whether an ingredient works, or is present at a dose anybody has studied.
- Whether the label’s claims are supported.
- Which certifying body issued it, unless that body is named. No certifying body is named in the material supplied here.
The useful way to hold it: GMP raises the probability that what the manufacturer intended to put in the capsule is what ended up there. It says nothing at all about whether what they intended was worth taking.
FDA registered facility
Food facilities that manufacture, process, pack or hold food for consumption in the United States register with the FDA. Registration is a filing. It creates a record that a facility exists and what it does.
It is not an inspection, not an endorsement and not an approval. The FDA’s own consumer material is explicit that the agency does not approve dietary supplements before they are marketed: the manufacturer is responsible for the safety of the product and for ensuring its label claims are truthful and not misleading, and the agency acts afterwards.
This is the single most commonly misread mark in the category. A roundel bearing the letters FDA next to the word registered will be read by many people as FDA approved, and those two phrases have almost nothing in common.
The same asymmetry is why the disclaimer exists at all. The back of this bottle carries it in full: these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Manufactured in the USA
A statement about where the plant stands. It is a real thing to say and it is worth something — a US facility is inside the FDA’s inspection reach in a way an overseas one may not be.
What it does not describe is where the raw materials came from. Botanical extracts move internationally as a matter of course, and a blend assembled and encapsulated in the United States can be made of materials grown and extracted in several other countries.
On this product that question is sharper than usual, because the seventh ingredient on the panel is orchic substance, which is bovine testicle tissue. The country of origin, the age of the cattle and the processing method are all unstated, and all three are what a reader concerned about an animal tissue would want to know. That gap is set out in full on the two left out.
So the honest reading of this mark: it tells you about the assembly, and the assembly is the last step. The eight materials arriving at that plant have histories the mark is silent about.
Every mark shown with this product
The ten marks below appear in the material supplied for this product. Each one is shown as it is drawn, with a sentence saying what it covers, because the point is that you recognize the roundel first and read the sentence second.
| Mark | What was assessed | What it does not cover |
|---|---|---|
| GMP Certified | A facility, against a manufacturing-practice standard, on the day of an audit | The contents of this bottle, and no certifying body is named |
| FDA Registered Facility | Nothing. Registration is a filing that records that a facility exists | Approval of any kind. The FDA does not approve supplements before they are marketed |
| Manufactured in the USA | Where the plant that assembled the product stands | Where the eight raw materials were grown, extracted or sourced |
Scroll this table sideways →
GMP Certified
A manufacturing-practice certification held by a facility. It describes how a plant runs, not what is in this bottle.
FDA Registered Facility
Registration is a filing, not an approval. The FDA does not approve dietary supplements before they are marketed.
Manufactured in the USA
A statement about where the plant is. It says nothing about where the raw materials came from, which on a product containing bovine tissue is the question a reader would actually have.
Vegetarian
This one is contradicted by the panel. The Other Ingredients line declares a gelatin capsule, and the blend contains orchic substance, which is bovine testicle tissue. Neither is vegetarian.
Doctor Formulated
No formulating doctor is named anywhere in the material supplied to this site, so the claim cannot be checked.
Natural Ingredients
Botanicals and an animal tissue are natural in the ordinary sense. The word has no agreed regulatory definition for a supplement, and it says nothing about dose or evidence.
Non-GMO
A sourcing claim about the inputs. No certifying body is named.
Naturally Gluten Free
Plausible from the Other Ingredients line, which contains no obvious gluten source, and unconfirmed by any test document.
Dairy Free
Also plausible from the same line, and also unconfirmed.
Money-Back Satisfaction
A seller promise rather than a certification, and the one term on this product that was never given a number. The brief says only “as printed on the marketplace listing”.
One of these to check against the label
A vegetarian mark appears in the same asset folder as a label whose Other Ingredients line declares a gelatin capsule, and whose blend contains bovine testicle tissue. US regulation defines gelatin as a product of collagen from cattle and swine.
We publish that contradiction rather than resolve it, because we cannot resolve it: both the seal and the panel were supplied, and only one of them can be right. If you are vegetarian, vegan, or keeping halal or kosher, the panel is the document to trust.
The documents that were not supplied
Set against ten marks, here is the complete list of test documentation supplied to this website for this product: none. Not a certificate of analysis, not an assay, not a heavy metal panel, not a microbiological result, not an identity test, not a third-party verification of any kind.
A certificate reference number was supplied, and a reference number is an index entry rather than a document. Nor was any clinician named anywhere in the material, which leaves the doctor formulated mark with nobody to check.
What a credible test package looks like
- A certificate of analysis naming the lot on your bottle.
- A named laboratory, with its accreditation stated, and a date.
- Identity confirmation for each raw material, by species and plant part.
- A potency or marker assay, with the standardization stated for each extract.
- Heavy metals and microbiological results, each with a limit beside the result.
- Ideally, per-ingredient amounts — which on a proprietary blend a seller is not obliged to give, and which would be the most informative document about this product in existence.
Asking for that package is an ordinary request. It changes hands between manufacturers and sellers routinely. Batch and lot has the questions in the order that makes them easiest to answer.
Why this category attracts the question
None of what follows is a finding about SodaPeak. We have no test result for this product, which is the whole point of the section above, and a gap in the record is not an accusation.
The FDA has published warnings about products marketed as testosterone boosters found to contain hidden drug ingredients that were not declared on the label. A consumer monograph makes the same point about horny goat weed products, which is the first ingredient on this panel by weight.
The Federal Trade Commission has acted on the advertising side of the same category, settling charges against marketers of androgen supplements over the claims they made for them. Contents and claims are two different failure modes and this category has a history with both.
What follows from that, and what does not
What follows: in a category with that record, a document about your lot is worth more than a row of marks about a building, and it is reasonable to ask for one before you buy.
What does not follow: any suggestion that this product contains anything other than what its panel declares. We have no evidence of that and would publish it if we did. The honest statement is the narrow one — nothing has been tested, as far as this site was told.
Where the label does earn credit, we give it. This is a complete Supplement Facts panel with a directions panel, a storage line, a caution, a keep-out-of-reach line, an expiry date and the FDA disclaimer in full. That is a real label, and our editorial scorecard scores it as one, while marking the rows where it will not say what it knows.
References
The sources behind the numbers on this page.
- U.S. Food and Drug AdministrationQuestions and Answers on Dietary Supplements — FDA.gov · source
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration — 2023T XTRA Strength Test Booster contains hidden drug ingredient — FDA.gov · source
- U.S. Federal Trade Commission — 1999Androgen Supplement Marketers Settle FTC Charges — FTC.gov · source
- WebMD / Natural MedicinesHorny Goat Weed — uses, side effects and adulteration warning — WebMD.com · source
- U.S. Government Publishing Office21 CFR 189.5 — Prohibited cattle materials, including the definitions of specified risk materials and of gelatin — Code of Federal Regulations · source
- U.S. Government Publishing Office21 CFR 101.36 — Nutrition labeling of dietary supplements, including the proprietary blend and descending-order requirements — Code of Federal Regulations · source
See the SodaPeak packs
One, three or six bottles. The price is on the seller’s checkout page, because it is the one figure this site was never given — and a figure we were not given is not a figure we will print.
Shipping and the guarantee term are shown at checkout. This site publishes no number it was not able to verify.