One product, one panel, one record.
BioSchwartz Probiotics 40 Billion CFU Capsules, 60 ct — label audit
The front of the bottle pairs "40 BILLION CFU" with "SHELF LIFE POTENCY GUARANTEED*". The asterisk resolves, in three separate federal label records, to "This product guarantees a minimum potency of 20 Billion CFU per serving until expiration date." The headline is exactly twice the guarantee.
This page is an audit of a label. It records what this product’s panel discloses, what of that could be checked against a primary record, and what could not. The score below ranks this product on that disclosure and on nothing else.
The record this page rests on
- NIH label record
- Label read on
- The most recent dated artefact behind this page. Labels change; this is how old our reading of it is.
- Cohort
- Addendum — outside the founding denominators Torn down 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator the site publishes.
- How deep this went
- Full forensic teardown Panel transcribed, every strain designator queried, every certification chased to its issuer’s own register, and the literature behind each marketing claim opened and read.
- What did not survive verification
- Part of this page was refuted or could not be reproduced The link between the live SKU and its federal label records is a content match, not a UPC match, and must never be described as one. None of the three DSLD records for this product carries a UPC field — record 240411's upcSku holds a marketplace-internal item code rather than a GTIN — while the live Shopify barcode is 810056431013. The records were tied to the live product on brand, product name, serving size, servings per container and the exact four-strain designator list in identical order. That is an unusually strong content match and it is not identity proof. It matters because this page's highest-value finding, the 20-billion expiry floor, is quoted from those federal records. The floor is independently corroborated on the brand's own carton photograph, which is why the finding is published at all — but the provenance limit travels with it.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
66.0 out of 100
Rank 59 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 6 other products — 7 products sit on 66.0 and are tied. They hold the position jointly; no tiebreaker is applied, because every tiebreaker available here would be a number the rubric deliberately refused to weigh, smuggled back in to make a list look tidier.
The score measures one thing: how much of what you are buying this company tells you, and how much of that survives being checked against a source that is not the company. It does not measure whether the product works — this site holds no efficacy data of its own, and 0 of 294 organism slots in the founding cohort carry a strain with a human randomised trial for any male-specific outcome, so nobody in this category has evidence that would support a ranking by effect.
Computed over the whole rubric: this record answers all five questions below, so nothing is renormalised away and the divisor is the full 1.00. That share travels with every score on this site and is never dropped — a score over part of the rubric’s weight and the same score over all of it are different claims.
| Component | Weight | What was counted, and where | Fraction | Weight × fraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strain identity printed on the panel | 0.24 | 4 of 4 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 4 / 4 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 4 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 4 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "both-endpoints": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated yes, basis reaches expiry yes — 3 of 3. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2200 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 4 of 4 checked organism slots resolve to at least one human randomised trial under the designator exactly as printed. This counts whether the identity leads to a trial, never what the trial found. | 4 / 4 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | 1 claimed certification queried at the issuer’s register and not listed there. | 0 / 1 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
0.6600 — the last column added up — divided by 1.00, the weight this record could answer, is 0.6600. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 66.0 above.
See this product’s row in the full ranking, alongside the other 153 scored products, or read what each of the five components asks and how to check it .
What this label discloses
Everything in this table is what the product itself states — on the printed panel, on the brand’s own page, or in the label record the manufacturer filed. Nothing in it is checked yet; checking is the next section.
| Disclosure | As recorded |
|---|---|
| CFU as printed | Probiotic Blend† — 184 mg (40 Billion CFU) |
| What that count is measured against | Both endpoints printed |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 4 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
Panel footnote: "†Formulated with 40 Billion CFU at time of manufacture." Front of pack: "PROBIOTIC 40 BILLION CFU — SHELF LIFE POTENCY GUARANTEED*", whose asterisk resolves to "This product guarantees a minimum potency of 20 Billion CFU per serving until expiration date."
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The panel prints both a manufacture figure and an expiration figure, so the decline over shelf life is readable off the label itself.
Every organism on the panel carries a printed strain designator. Whether those designators lead anywhere is a separate question, answered below.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | La-14 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | ("Lactobacillus acidophilus La-14"[All Fields] OR ("La-14"[All Fields] AND acidophilus[All Fields])) AND (randomized controlled trial[pt] OR clinical trial[pt]) AND humans[mh] |
| Lactobacillus paracasei | Lpc-37 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Lpc-37"[All Fields] AND (randomized controlled trial[pt] OR clinical trial[pt]) AND humans[mh] |
| Bifidobacterium lactis (correct name: Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis) | Bl-04 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Bl-04"[All Fields] AND (randomized controlled trial[pt] OR clinical trial[pt]) AND humans[mh] |
| Lactobacillus plantarum (correct name: Lactiplantibacillus plantarum) | Lp-115 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | "Lp-115"[All Fields] AND (randomized controlled trial[pt] OR clinical trial[pt]) AND humans[mh] |
What of that is verifiable
A disclosure is verifiable when a reader can open a record that neither we nor the brand controls and see the same thing. Below is every dated artefact this page rests on. What is absent from this list is not verified, however reasonable it sounds.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 249935 (opens in a new tab) captured On-market federal record. Carries the 20-billion expiry-floor statement verbatim, and transcribes the same four designators in the same order as the live panel. Two further off-market records, 240411 and 270392, carry the same floor statement — three federal records, one number. This record has no UPC field, which is why the tie to the live SKU is a content match rather than a UPC match.
- Photograph of the printed panel — bioschwartz-60ct-supplement-facts-2026-07-31 captured The brand's own 60 ct Supplement Facts JPEG on cdn.shopify.com, transcribed by hand. Carries the at-manufacture † footnote. The 20-billion expiry floor is legible on this product's carton only in a roughly 130-pixel-wide side-of-carton render inside a lifestyle photograph — the most consumer-relevant sentence on the label, at that size.
- Photograph of the printed panel — PRO40cp120ct-BSZ-US_main_images-05.jpg captured The 120 ct panel, which prints the CFU inline as "Probiotic Blend† 184 mg (40 Billion CFU)" and contains no † footnote inside the panel box. Transcribed for comparison; the SKU audited here is the 60 ct.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — bioschwartz-probiotics-40b-60ct-2026-07-31https://bioschwartz.com/products/probiotics-40-billion-cfu-capsules-60ct — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured HTTP 200. Note the redirect: /products/probiotics-40-billion-cfus now 301-redirects here with x-redirect-reason shop_redirect, and the old handle's .json returns 404. Anyone re-running this must follow the redirect first. Live barcode 810056431013.
How many of its strains have a human trial for what it is sold for
Across the frozen founding cohort, 0 of 294 organism slots (0.0%) carry an organism with a human randomised controlled trial for any male-specific outcome. Not for this product — for all 27 of the founding teardowns, taken together. That is the number to hold against any men’s probiotic, including this one.
Two further founding-cohort figures for context: only 43 of 294 organism slots carry a strain with any human RCT at all under the exact code printed on the label, and only 2 of 27 products have a published human trial of the finished formula — the thing actually in the bottle. All three figures divide by the frozen cohort of 27 teardowns and 294 organism slots, never by every teardown on this site.
For this product specifically, 4 organism slots carry a strain with a human RCT under the exact designator printed on the label.
A word on what a designator has to clear before it counts here. The organism must be named with the exact strain code that appears in the trial, the trial must be in humans, and the code must return that trial when a reader searches it. A species name does not qualify: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species contains thousands of them.
What it costs per day
$0.80 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $23.97 USD
- What that buys
- 60-capsule bottle (30 servings, 2 capsules daily). $21.57 on sale; the 120 ct is $41.97, which works out to $0.700 a day. 10% subscription discount offered.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://bioschwartz.com/products/probiotics-40-billion-cfu-capsules-60ct — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
What certification it holds, checked at the issuer’s own register
A badge on a bottle is a claim like any other. Every row below was checked — or not checked — at the certifier’s own public register, never at the badge. Across the frozen founding cohort, 2 of 27 products hold a certification we could confirm at the issuer — a founding-cohort figure, not a count over every teardown on this site.
| Programme | Status at the issuer | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| "LAB TESTED — 3rd PARTY CERTIFIED — PURITY & POTENCY" / "Accredited Third-Party Tested" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "GMP CERTIFIED" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "MADE WITH NON GMO INGREDIENTS" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| Clean Label Project | Absent from register | 31 July 2026 |
"LAB TESTED — 3rd PARTY CERTIFIED — PURITY & POTENCY" / "Accredited Third-Party Tested"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
No certifier, no certificate number, no COA link, no batch lookup, on the label, on the product page, or in any of the three federal records. This is not an unreachable register — it is a certification claim with no certifier. There is nothing to check.
"GMP CERTIFIED"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
No registrar named. cGMP compliance is a legal baseline for dietary supplement manufacturing under 21 CFR 111, not an achievement. Presenting it as a certification seal converts a floor into a differentiator.
"MADE WITH NON GMO INGREDIENTS"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Drawn as a circular seal in the same visual grammar as the Non-GMO Project butterfly. It is not Non-GMO Project Verified; it is a self-assertion styled as a third-party mark.
Clean Label Project
The register was queried and this product is not listed on it.
The register was queried. The full certified-brand facet list was retrieved and brands beginning with B were enumerated; BioSchwartz is not among them. A scoped negative about one specific register, not a judgment about the product.
How it differs from the same brand’s women’s version
Across the fourteen same-brand men’s-versus-women’s label diffs run inside the frozen founding cohort, zero men’s or default formulas contain a probiotic strain, identified by designator, that was selected on male-specific evidence. In eight of the fourteen the sex-specific differentiator is a botanical or a mineral, and in five of the fourteen the women’s SKU is better-specified, cheaper, or both — “better-specified” meaning the panel that discloses more, never the panel with more in it. The rule behind each of those counts, and all fourteen pairs classified against it , are published in full. Diffs run on teardowns added since sit outside this fourteen, and outside the sentence above.
Compared against BioSchwartz Women's Prebiotic + Probiotic, 60 ct. Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- The women's SKU is built on a 20 billion CFU probiotic blend, in the brand's own words "Our 20 billion CFU Probiotic Blend". This unisex SKU declares 40 billion at manufacture. BioSchwartz Women's Prebiotic + Probiotic label art versus this product's panel, both read 2026-07-31
- The women's SKU adds a "Women's Health Blend" that the brand says supports "urinary health, vaginal health, and more". This product has no equivalent blend and no sex-specific ingredient of any kind. BioSchwartz Women's Prebiotic + Probiotic label art, read 2026-07-31
- The women's 60 ct sells at $43.17 against $23.97 for this 60 ct SKU — roughly 1.8x the price for half the declared CFU. bioschwartz.com Shopify catalogue, 81 products enumerated 2026-07-31
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 front-of-pack-forty-billion-is-double-the-guaranteed-twenty
"PROBIOTIC 40 BILLION CFU" sits next to "SHELF LIFE POTENCY GUARANTEED*" on the front of the bottle, and the side panel says "GUARANTEED POTENCY UNTIL EXPIRATION — When you buy BioSchwartz Probiotics, you can be certain that the strains will be alive and ready to work until the expiration date." The panel footnote says the 40 billion is at time of manufacture. The asterisk resolves, in three separate federal records, to a minimum of 20 billion CFU per serving until expiration. The pairing invites the reading that 40 billion is guaranteed through shelf life. The guarantee is half that.
The record: DSLD 249935, 240411 and 270392 statements arrays, plus the 60 ct panel footnote and carton photograph, all read 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 eight-capsule-comparison-uses-the-manufacture-number
The older carton reads "2 capsules = 8 capsules or other probiotics — To receive 40 billion CFU cultures per day, you would need to take 8 capsules of a probiotic with only 5 billion per capsules." The arithmetic is fine. The comparison is not: it sets this product's at-manufacture 40 billion against a competitor's per-capsule figure. Measured against BioSchwartz's own guaranteed 20 billion, the honest version of the sentence is "2 capsules = 4 capsules."
The record: DSLD 240411, verbatim — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 every-certification-seal-is-issuer-less
"3RD PARTY QUALITY TESTED", "GMP CERTIFIED", "PROFESSIONAL GRADE PRODUCT", "LAB TESTED — 3rd PARTY CERTIFIED — PURITY & POTENCY", "Accredited Third-Party Tested". Not one names an issuer. No NSF, no USP, no UL, no Informed Choice, no BSCG, no lab, no certificate number, no COA link, no batch lookup. This is a stronger finding than an unreachable register: there is no register.
The record: Label art and bioschwartz.com product page, full text scanned for certifier tokens, 2026-07-31
Finding 4 non-gmo-self-claim-drawn-as-a-third-party-seal
"MADE WITH NON GMO INGREDIENTS" is rendered as a circular seal in the same visual grammar as the Non-GMO Project butterfly. It is a self-assertion, not a Non-GMO Project verification.
The record: BioSchwartz label art, read 2026-07-31
Finding 5 proprietary-blend-erases-four-good-designators
All four strains are properly designated — the strongest disclosure in the batch — and none of them has a declared dose. 184 mg and 40 billion CFU are the blend's, not any strain's. DSLD records the structured potency for that row as NP, not present. Four named strains whose amounts are unknowable is a better label than most of this category and still not a checkable one.
The record: DSLD 249935 structured record and the 60 ct panel, both 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 lp-115s-only-named-study-is-a-mouse-model-it-failed
Lp-115 has one human RCT anywhere, an open-label nine-strain synbiotic in colicky infants, on three spellings. Its one piece of primary mechanistic literature is PMID 16957197, a mouse TNBS colitis model, and the paper's own words are that L. salivarius Ls-33 had a significant preventive effect "while Lactobacillus plantarum Lp-115 and Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM did not."
The record: PMID 16957197, Appl Environ Microbiol 2006, verbatim — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 7 lpc-37s-studied-dose-is-87-percent-of-the-whole-guaranteed-floor
The single-strain Lpc-37 trial dosed 17.5 billion CFU a day, for stress rather than digestion, and did not meet its primary hypothesis. This product's guaranteed floor is 20 billion for four strains combined. For the studied dose to be delivered at expiry, one of four strains would have to be essentially the entire formula.
The record: PMID 33385020 versus the 20-billion expiry floor in DSLD 249935 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 8 la-14-has-no-single-strain-human-digestive-rct
All five of La-14's human trials are multi-strain blends, one of which is a vaginal-colonisation study. Narrowing the query to digestive endpoints returns exactly one record, and it is an in-vitro simulated-gut model, PMID 31941108 — a paper authored by two DuPont employees testing this exact four-strain quartet as a stock commercial mixture.
The record: PMID 31941108, Microorganisms 2020, both authors DuPont — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 9 with-organic-prebiotics-is-fifty-milligrams-of-fos
The product title says "with Organic Prebiotics", plural. The panel has one — FOS 50 mg from organic blue agave. Worse, the side-panel marketing printed on this product's own label art says "Our formulas uses natural prebiotics including chicory root, potato starch and Jerusalem artichoke root". None of those three appears in this product's Supplement Facts or Other Ingredients on either pack size. The sentence says "our formulas", so it is arguably a brand-level statement — printed on this product's panel art, beside this product's panel, describing prebiotics this product does not contain.
The record: BioSchwartz 60 ct and 120 ct panel art versus the product title, all read 2026-07-31
Finding 10 astragalus-and-noni-marketed-as-actives-declared-as-inactives
The brand's own bullet reads "with 40 billion CFU's and astragalus" — headline benefit copy. On the panel, Astragalus Root Extract sits in Other Ingredients with no declared amount, on both pack sizes. Same for Noni Fruit on the 60 ct.
The record: BioSchwartz product page bullets versus the 60 ct and 120 ct panels, 2026-07-31
Finding 11 other-ingredient-lists-differ-across-pack-sizes-and-across-time
60 ct — acid-resistant hypromellose capsule, L-leucine, rice maltodextrin, silicon dioxide, noni fruit, astragalus root extract. 120 ct — rice flour, hypromellose, silicon dioxide, ascorbyl palmitate, L-leucine, astragalus root extract, no noni. DSLD 249935 in 2021 — cellulose, rice dextrin, L-leucine, polysaccharides complex. Three sources, three different non-active lists, one product name.
The record: 60 ct panel, 120 ct panel and DSLD 249935, all read 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 12 five-womens-probiotic-skus-and-zero-mens
From the brand's own 81-product Shopify catalogue. BioSchwartz genders multivitamins in both directions and genders magnesium and beef organs toward women, so the capability plainly exists. It has never been pointed at a probiotic for men. The women's probiotic that does exist costs roughly 1.8x this SKU for half the declared CFU.
The record: bioschwartz.com Shopify catalogue, 81 products enumerated 2026-07-31
What we could not verify
Every gap below is published rather than deleted. Most are derived automatically from the empty fields in this page’s own record, so a gap cannot be hidden by leaving a box blank.
- "LAB TESTED — 3rd PARTY CERTIFIED — PURITY & POTENCY" / "Accredited Third-Party Tested" status
- No certifier, no certificate number, no COA link, no batch lookup, on the label, on the product page, or in any of the three federal records. This is not an unreachable register — it is a certification claim with no certifier. There is nothing to check.
- "GMP CERTIFIED" status
- No registrar named. cGMP compliance is a legal baseline for dietary supplement manufacturing under 21 CFR 111, not an achievement. Presenting it as a certification seal converts a floor into a differentiator.
- "MADE WITH NON GMO INGREDIENTS" status
- Drawn as a circular seal in the same visual grammar as the Non-GMO Project butterfly. It is not Non-GMO Project Verified; it is a self-assertion styled as a third-party mark.
- A UPC cross-check between the live SKU and its federal label records
- None of the three DSLD records for this product carries a UPC. Record 240411's upcSku field contains X001CL5VID, which is a marketplace-internal item code, not a GTIN. The live Shopify barcode is 810056431013. The federal record was therefore matched to the live SKU on brand, product name, serving size, servings per container and the exact four-strain designator list in identical order — an unusually strong content match, and not a UPC match. It must not be described as one.
- Per-strain CFU
- 184 mg and 40 billion CFU are declared for the blend, never per strain. Which of the four holds the 40 billion is undisclosed. DSLD's structured field for that row records the quantity as unit NP, "not present" — no numeric potency survives into federal structured data at all.
- Whether the 120 ct carton carries the at-manufacture footnote anywhere outside the panel
- On the 120 ct panel image the row reads "Probiotic Blend† 184 mg (40 Billion CFU)" and the only footnote printed inside the panel box is the daily-value one. There is no † footnote in that panel, so a consumer reading only the 120 ct Supplement Facts sees an unqualified 40 Billion CFU amount per serving. Only what is inside the image the brand publishes can be reported; the footnote may be printed elsewhere on the physical carton. This concerns the 120 ct SKU, not the 60 ct audited here.
- A dose rationale for the 50 mg of FOS
- The brand offers none anywhere. Prebiotic intervention trials generally dose FOS and inulin in grams rather than tens of milligrams, but no specific dose-response citation was pinned in this pass, so the comparison is left unquantified here rather than asserted.
- Whether MAKTrek delivery technology is still used
- The older carton in DSLD 240411 names "MAKTrek Technology — Featuring the most innovative probiotic delivery system". The current 60 ct panel instead lists an acid-resistant hypromellose capsule as an other-ingredient. The survivability claim outlived the named technology; the label does not say whether the technology survived.
- Funding and conflicts of interest for the multi-strain La-14 trials
- PMIDs 34111674, 31250099 and 18422632 — not retrievable from the abstracts. Their funding is not characterised here.
How to check every line of this page yourself
Nothing on this page requires trusting us. Every claim above resolves to a record you can open:
- Open the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record linked at the top of this page. It is the label the manufacturer filed, not our transcription of it.
- Compare the CFU line and the suggested-use line against the disclosure table above. If they disagree with us, we are wrong and we want to know.
- Take any strain designator from the panel and run the query printed beside it. The query is published precisely so you can get a different answer than we did.
- Divide the price by the number of days the label’s own dose instructions make the container last. That arithmetic is the whole of the cost-per-day row.
- Search the certifier’s own register for this product, not for the brand. A company can participate in a programme without this product being on its list.
Start with the front of the bottle, because that is where the whole story is.
“PROBIOTIC 40 BILLION CFU”, and beside it, “SHELF LIFE POTENCY GUARANTEED*”. Read together, those two phrases say: forty billion, guaranteed until the expiry date. Follow the asterisk and it resolves — in three separate federal label records, all carrying the identical sentence — to “This product guarantees a minimum potency of 20 Billion CFU per serving until expiration date.”
The number on the front is at manufacture. The number the company will stand behind on the day you swallow the last capsule is half of it.
That gap is worth more than the criticism it earns, because almost nobody else in this category publishes it at all. Most brands print an at-manufacture figure and stop, which is a decay allowance they are asking you to accept without naming. BioSchwartz names its: 40 down to 20, a 50% allowance, in writing. It is the most useful disclosure this project has found — and it halves its own headline.
The strain disclosure is genuinely the best in its batch. Four organisms, four real designators — La-14, Lpc-37, Bl-04, Lp-115 — corroborated line-for-line in three independent federal records. Then read what is behind them. Bl-04 carries the strongest anchor: a real single-strain randomised trial, n=465, 241 of them male, at a specified 2 billion CFU/day — for upper-respiratory illness, on a product sold for digestion. Lpc-37’s single-strain trial dosed 17.5 billion, which is 87.5% of this product’s entire guaranteed floor, studied stress rather than digestion, and missed its primary hypothesis. La-14 has five human trials and every one is a multi-strain blend; narrow to digestive endpoints and the only hit is an in-vitro gut model. And Lp-115 has one human trial, in colicky babies, plus one mechanistic mouse study — in which Lp-115 failed and a different strain worked.
Four named strains, and not one of them has a declared dose. The panel gives 184 mg and 40 billion for the
blend; the federal record stores that row’s potency as NP, not present.
Then the seals. “3rd Party Certified — Purity & Potency”, “GMP Certified”, “Accredited Third-Party Tested”, “Professional Grade”, and a circular “Made with Non GMO Ingredients” badge drawn in the visual grammar of the Non-GMO Project butterfly. Not one names an issuer. No lab, no standard, no certificate number, no COA. This is not an unreachable register — it is a certification claim with no certifier at all.
Two closing notes. The title says “with Organic Prebiotics”, plural; the panel has 50 mg of FOS, and the label art beside it advertises chicory root, potato starch and Jerusalem artichoke that the product does not contain. And the brand sells five women’s-specific probiotics and zero men’s — while telling you, correctly and to its credit, that this one is “optimal for both men and women.”