For brands selling into Australia
The Hive is the regulatory information and ordering platform from Supplement Factory, a UK supplement manufacturer. It brings published claim registers, market rules, regulatory alerts, and your quotes, orders and signed documents into one account. For business customers only.
Australia behaves least like every other market on this site. The Therapeutic Goods Administration works from closed lists made by legislative determination: one names the ingredients that are permissible and what each may be used for, the other names the indications that may be used and the evidence each one needs. You do not write a claim and then defend it. You take one from the determination, or you do not make it. The Hive mirrors both instruments, and if a determination has been repealed and replaced, the import fails loudly rather than serving you a rule that is no longer in force.
The Hive brings PRAS+ alerts, your Vault, and your quotes and orders into one account. For business customers only.
What is actually in there
Both TGA determinations, mirrored from the Federal Register of Legislation, and the registers of other markets an Australian brand sells into. The Australian pair sit first because in this market they are not reference material, they are the boundary of what is possible.
Federal Register of Legislation, used under the publisher’s terms of use
Each instrument is pinned by its identifier and checked against the Register before an import runs. A replacement determination gets a new identifier, so an instrument silently going out of force is exactly the failure this design exists to prevent: the import stops and says so instead of loading a repealed rule.
The US, Californian and Australian registers hold over 9,000 entries as at the date of publication. We do not publish counts for the GB and EU registers. Every source is attributed.
over 5,000
permissible ingredients for the Australian market
Therapeutic Goods Administration · publisher terms of use apply
The closed list of what may be used at all, each entry carrying its purpose and any specific requirements attached to it. If it is not there, it is not a formulation question, it is a no.
over 1,000
permitted indications for the Australian market
Therapeutic Goods Administration · publisher terms of use apply
The closed list of what may be said, each indication carrying the type of evidence it requires and the requirements attached to it.
Mirrored
European health claim entries, permitted and not permitted
European Commission register, on EFSA opinions · CC BY 4.0
The first register most Australian exporters need, and a different model again: authorised wordings with conditions of use, plus published refusals.
over 1,300
GRAS notices for the United States
US Food and Drug Administration · public domain
Where an ingredient’s American safety standing is usually established.
over 1,300
new dietary ingredient notifications for the United States
US Food and Drug Administration · public domain
And the notification route for anything newer than the 1994 cutoff American law works from.
over 900
Proposition 65 listed chemicals for California
California OEHHA · publisher terms of use apply
Californian, additional to everything federal, and often triggered by contamination rather than by your ingredient list.
Figures are stated as "over" because a determination is remade and the numbers move with it. The European claim register is shown as mirrored rather than counted: we do not publish a count for it. The Hive also holds the Great Britain claim register, novel food status and further national datasets that are not counted above.
The local part
Almost all of it comes from one difference: in Australia the lists are closed. A market that lets you argue rewards a good argument. A market that hands you a list does not.
Each permissible ingredient carries a purpose and, frequently, specific requirements. Finding your ingredient on the list is the beginning of the check and not the end of it, because the entry may permit it for something other than what you intend.
Permitted indications are set out in a determination, each with the type of evidence it requires and the requirements attached. Marketing copy that reads beautifully and matches no indication is not a strong claim weakly worded. It is a claim you are not permitted to make.
These lists live in legislation that gets remade. When it is remade the new instrument carries a new identifier, and anything pinned to the old one is pinned to something no longer in force. A rule you checked carefully last year can be a rule that has since been repealed.
An authorised EU or GB health claim has no standing in the Australian system, and an Australian permitted indication has no standing in theirs. They are not translations of one another. They are different instruments answering different questions.
The counts are on this page and they are not numbers anybody holds in their head, and both instruments move. The people most likely to be caught are the ones confident they already know what is on the list. It is a search problem, which is precisely why it lives in the Hive rather than in a folder.
Inside the Hive
Eight tools, each built against a specific mistake. For an Australian brand the register tools do the heavy lifting, because in a closed-list market the question is nearly always "is it on the list, and on what terms".
Relates to Mistakes 01 and 02
Search the health claim register by ingredient, by claim or by body system. You see the permitted wording, the conditions of use including the dose the claim requires, and the entries that are recorded as not permitted. It helps you check a claim before a designer sets it in type.
Relates to Mistake 03
The requirements for each market you are considering, in one place: what has to be notified, what is restricted, what a label has to carry. It helps you ask whether a formulation can be sold in a market while the question is still cheap to ask.
Relates to Mistake 05
PRAS+ alerts you to changes in the sources it monitors, for the categories you select. It may not cover every change. Regulatory alerts and recall notices are included for Supplement Factory customers.
Relates to Mistakes 01, 02 and 04
Ask a regulatory question in plain English. Supplement Genius is designed to answer from the registers and show the entry, publisher and date. Check the source before relying on an answer. It tells you what the register says, not what to do about your product.
Relates to The mistake of not being able to prove it later
Signed orders, terms, specifications and certificates are filed under your account and available to you there, so you are not searching an old email thread when a retailer asks for documentation.
Relates to The mistake of claiming what you have not verified
Scan a label, see which tests match the ingredients, see the price on screen, send it in. Results and certificates are filed to your Vault. Access is included and tests are charged. Every membership level carries a discount on testing.
Relates to Mistake 02
Artwork approvals and uploads run inside the Hive and are part of the Hive. Design and compliance services are priced separately, per project.
Relates to The mistake of not asking
Message your concierge and book a client care call. Concierge Lite on Hive Plus covers messages and booked calls, and we aim to reply as quickly as we can. The full service on Hive Pro adds priority handling and arranges the travel and hospitality benefits for you.
Membership is the same everywhere: The Hive, Hive Plus and Hive Pro. For business customers only. See the full pricing.
Straight answers
These are answers about how the rules work and what the Hive shows you. They are not advice about your product, and nothing here replaces your own regulatory or legal counsel.
Permitted indications are the claims that may be used, set out in a legislative determination made by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, each with the type of evidence it requires and any requirements attached to it.
The important consequence is that the wording is chosen rather than composed. The Hive mirrors the determination so you can search the indications, see what each one demands of you, and settle the wording before it reaches a designer.
It is the legislative instrument that lists the ingredients permissible for use, each with its purpose and any specific requirements attached to it.
Because the list is closed, an ingredient that is absent is not a borderline case to be argued. The Hive holds the determination so a formulation can be checked against it early, when changing it is still a conversation rather than a write-off.
Check the instrument, not the copy: a replaced determination carries a new identifier, and the old one stops being the rule.
This is the failure mode the Hive is built against here. Each instrument is pinned and checked against the Federal Register of Legislation before an import runs, and if it is no longer in force the import fails and says so rather than quietly loading a repealed list. Every answer carries the source and the date it was checked.
No. An authorised European or British health claim has no standing in the Australian system, which works from its own permitted indications.
They are different regimes answering different questions, not translations of each other, so a claim has to be found again in the Australian determination. The Hive holds all of these registers on one account, which is the point: the answer changes per market, and so should the entry you are reading.
From the Federal Register of Legislation, used under the publisher’s terms of use, harvested directly from the published text of the determinations themselves.
There is no embedded snapshot standing in for the live source, deliberately: a partial snapshot of a register this size would be either an invented subset or a fork of the law. If the harvest fails, the run is recorded as failed and nothing is imported.
A closed list is the kindest kind of rule, because it is knowable in an afternoon. It is only brutal to the people who assumed and to the people reading last year’s instrument.
