New York, NY – June 27, 2005 – The Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program (ERSP), the electronic direct-response industry’s self-regulatory forum supervised by the National Advertising Review Council (NARC), announced that it has recommended that direct response marketer United Health Laboratories, marketers for the nutritional supplement, CarboBurn, discontinue all performance claims, testimonial, comparative market, and safety claims made in its online advertising.  The truth and accuracy of the marketer’s claims came to the attention of ERSP from a consumer complaint.

In the inquiry for the CarboBurn Nutritional Supplement, ERSP requested that the marketer provide substantiation for: general performance claims (i.e., “YOU WON’T EVEN HAVE TO EXERCISE OR CHANGE YOUR DIET, IF YOU DON’T WANT TO.” and “stop storing fat.”); testimonials (i.e., “Lost 16 pounds in two weeks!”); comparative market claims (i.e., “Other products cost about the same or more than CarboBurn, but do less for your weight loss.”) and safety claims (i.e., “Zero Side Effects.”).

While acknowledging that the marketer had voluntary undertaken the responsibility to modify and discontinue certain claims, ERSP concluded that the marketer did not provide the evidence necessary to support the performance, testimonial, comparative market, and safety claims made in the website advertisement. Although the marketer did represent that it possessed in-house testing, no testing data was submitted to the case record.  Therefore, ERSP recommends discontinuing all performance claims, testimonial, comparative market, and safety claims until sufficient testing can be conducted as support for such representations.

In response to ERSP’s decision, United Health Labs responded “CarboBurn appreciates the chance to participate in the self-regulatory process and we plan to make the changes described in order to more accurately represent the success… of CarboBurn.”