i wrote the company. there was a reviewer who claims swanson told her it had cyanacobalamin in it. remember, megafoods had low dose b vitamins in theirs too, it was just that it had low doses of sythetic b vitamins and if the consumer wants to believe that "foodstate" is what it sounds like, while megafoods brags about being all natural, so be it.
I could only speculate as to why someone at Swanson would have said that, but no one answering the phones at Swanson or replying to emails isn't going to have any proprietary type information other than what's on the product labels or spec sheet.
Swanson is a huge company and most of the people answering the phones or replying to customer service emails are not going to know a lot, if anything, about the products.
For example, if someone emailed them and asked if it had cyanocobalamin or methylcobalamin, it would be logical for them to assume that since it doesn't say methylcobalamin, that it could be cyanocobalamin bc you don't have to specify cyanocobalamin whereas you're supposed to specify if its methylcobalamin.
I'm not defending the company at all bc its not an ingredient I would use personally anyway, just providing context for how sometimes things can happen with companies.
A good example here - there are times people will email my office manager product related questions. She doesn't know a lot about the product science and its not her job to. Her job is to process wholesale orders, invoices, and to help customers with issues relating to their tracking and shipping or other order related questions. I always tell her that if she receives any science related or technical questions to forward those emails to me. Most people are respectful, but some people are pushy and they will continue to try to get her to answer their questions even after she explains that she forwarded it to someone who can better help them. There have been times where she has gave in and attempted to answer questions that she shouldn't have - and sometimes its resulted in situations where the people that pushed her to answer the questions got mad that they got an incorrect answer, when the truth is that they should have respected the honest answer when she told them she didn't know the answer and would forward their email to someone or have someone call them back that could better answer them rather than push her to try to answer a question that she's already said she isn't sure about and then get mad.
I'm just giving that as an example of things that all companies go through. And I would imagine its worse with Swanson bc they started as a catalog company and a lot of their staff is just order takers.
As for the ingredient, it's distributed here in the US by a company that is super strict about what they will distribute, so it likely is what its supposed to be - but the dosage of the B Vitamins is just so low that its not something I'd bother using personally.