After CIBJO, ‘Synthetic’ Battle Moves to FTC

By Rob Bates | September 11, 2026

Following CIBJO’s change of its influential Diamond Blue Book to say that technologically produced gemstones should only be called synthetics, certain industry groups are now looking to influence how the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Jewelry Guides handle lab-grown diamonds.

Stuart Samuels, president of the Diamond Manufacturers & Importers Association of America, tells JCK that when the FTC starts its planned overhaul of its Jewelry Guides in 2028, his group will urge that it mandate the term synthetic for non-natural stones.

“Synthetic is an accurate scientific description, used for decades in the jewelry world,” he says. “A synthetic diamond is real diamond material, but its origin is artificial—or manufactured. The fact that some sellers dislike the commercial implications of accurate terminology is not, by itself, a consumer-protection argument for avoiding it.”

He also argues, as many did at CIBJO, that the most commonly used modifier—lab-grown—is misleading, since the stones aren’t grown in a lab.

“Many consumers do not understand that these diamonds are synthetic products manufactured in a factory,” he says.

Some feel that the groups will have a much tougher time convincing the FTC than they did CIBJO. The FTC has long expressed doubts about the term synthetic, writing in 1996 that it’s “misunderstood by some consumers to mean something fake or artificial.” (That year was also when the agency first endorsed the term laboratory-grown, after American Gemological Laboratories—then run by its founder, C.R. “Cap” Beesley—suggested it.)

When the FTC last revised its Jewelry Guides in 2018, it responded to the cries of a larger and more vocal growing community and removed synthetic from its list of recommended descriptors for man-made stones.

“The record indicates many consumers mistakenly believe synthetic means an artificial product such as cubic zirconia, which lacks a diamond’s optical, physical, and chemical properties,” FTC attorneys wrote in a 161-page “Statement of Basis and Purpose” that accompanied the revision.

And while the FTC did not prohibit synthetic from being used—despite growers urging it to—it warned that if a “marketer uses synthetic to imply that a competitor’s lab-grown diamond is not an actual diamond, [that] would be deceptive.”

Perhaps because the FTC has not looked favorably on the term synthetic in the past, some industry groups are trying to temper expectations about how far they can get regulators to move.

“We’re looking to have synthetic as the premier descriptor when it comes to lab-grown diamonds,” World Diamond Council president Ronnie Vanderlinden recently told National Jeweler. “So it’ll be among others there.”

Natural diamond groups also are looking to clear up what they see as inconsistencies in the Jewelry Guides.

For example, in 2018, the FTC removed the word natural from its definition of diamond. Where it once defined diamond as a “natural mineral,” it argued that the availability of lab-grown stones meant that the definition should be changed to just say “mineral.”

John Ford, CEO of the American Gem Trade Association, complains that makes no sense.

“Scientifically, a mineral has to be a natural stone,” he says.

In addition, the revised definition arguably contradicts other parts of the Guides, which reserve the terms real and genuine for natural gems.

Like Samuels, Ford wants the FTC to change its recommended descriptors for created stones—as the AGTA has—though he declines to get more specific.

“That’s putting the cart before the horse,” he says. “If they put [the word natural] back in the definition, that will lead to a change in descriptors.”

Yet even as the industry hopes it will win a good outcome in 2028, some admit there’s considerable doubt that the jewelry guide revision will even occur then. They point to the Green Guides, which the industry has taken a big interest in. They were supposed to be overhauled in 2023. At press time, that revision appeared stalled.

And with many of the FTC’s jewelry veterans gone and as much as 25% of its staff cut, it’s not clear if those still there are as interested in its Jewelry Guides as the industry is.

(Photo courtesy of FTC)