HerbalEGram: Volume 16, Issue 5, May 2019

By Mark Blumenthal

I remember it well, but only a few of my colleagues in the botanical medicine world do, as most of them were not involved in the herb industry 40 years ago. One notable exception is my good friend and colleague Steven Foster, a botanist, photographer, and herb industry historian, who supplied me with a PDF of the document from his extensive archives. My original copy is probably in a box in a storage shed, where I keep old materials from that era.

The document is dated “May 1979.” It was the Herb Trade Association’s (HTA’s) “Policy Statement #1 – Canaigre,” the first in a short series of attempted self-regulatory policies issued by the short-lived herb industry trade group.

In May 1979, I was president of the HTA, the first industry trade organization in the United States that was focused solely on herbs and medicinal plants in commerce. At the time, I owned Sweethardt Herbs, Inc., a small herb wholesale company in Austin, Texas, which specialized in the sale of various types of ginseng: American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius, Araliaceae), Asian ginseng (P. ginseng), and what was then called “Siberian ginseng” (Eleutherococcus senticosus, Araliaceae). Now, due to the ban on the use of the name “Siberian ginseng” in the United States, it is referred to simply as “eleuthero.”

In the previous years (ca. 1977-1978), a new product called “Wild Red American Ginseng” or “Red Desert Ginseng” appeared on the market, sold in health food stores primarily in the southwestern United States. The product was sold as a dried herbal powder (with a reddish-brown color) in two-piece hard-shell gelatin capsules for several dollars less than most Korean white ginseng capsules, which was then the dominant form of ginseng in the US market. (Ginseng from China was only beginning to enter into the US market, because trade with China was just beginning; cultivated American ginseng capsules were also being introduced into the US market around this time.)

Those of us in the herb and ginseng trade who were familiar with the traditional and growing scientific literature on true ginseng (roots from the genus Panax) had many questions: What was this new so-called “ginseng”? Where did it come from? What were its benefits? How were these benefits documented? Were they based on traditional ethnobotany? Was there any modern scientific research? And so on.

These were the questions I began to investigate and which eventually led to the HTA Policy Statement #1 on canaigre.¹

“Canaigre” is the long-used colloquial name for the plant that for several years was mislabeled and marketed as “wild red American ginseng.” It is known in botany as Rumex hymenosepalus in the buckwheat family (Polygonaceae) and is also known as Arizona dock and tanner’s dock. The roots are high in tannins (20-30%, or more, according to some publications^2-5), and it traditionally was used as a gargle for sore throats by Native Americans and Hispanics in the southwestern United States. The plant grows in sandy and rocky alkaline soils or along dry arroyos (desert stream beds) in the American Southwest, north to Colorado, south to Baja California, and east to the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico.

Does canaigre have some health benefits? Yes. Are its health benefits equal to or similar to the adaptogenic properties of true Asian or American ginseng? Definitely not.

According to health food store owners and managers with whom I spoke at the time, the product was selling very well, presumably because of the lower price and because of the perceived high value of “wild” versus cultivated ginseng and the “red” versus the “white” ginseng. (Roots from the genus Panax are beige or white; in China and Korea the freshly-harvested roots are steamed according to a traditional method, and the steaming process results in the roots’ becoming a bit more stimulating and turning a dark reddish color.)

In his comprehensive article titled “A Brief History of Adulteration of Herbs, Spices, and Botanical Drugs” in HerbalGram issue 92 in 2011 (the first article published under the auspices of the ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program), Foster wrote:

In the late 19th century canaigre gained notoriety as a potential economic plant due to its very high tannin content. Mexicans and American Indian groups utilized the plant as a tanning agent. In 1887, R. J. Kerr of Tucson, Arizona, became interested in the plant’s commercial development as a tanning agent and shipped the first train car-load of the dried root to a Texas tannery. Academic interest followed. In the early 1890s the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) initiated cultivation studies. The production trials produced dried roots with up to 31% tannic acid in the dried root. Eugene Dittman, a tannery owner in New Braunfels, Texas, suggested that tanning could be done cheaper with canaigre in Texas than in any other part of the country. Like other Texas tanners of the late 19th century, he believed that the best quality leather is produced by canaigre or its extract, and “is of the very best; a very fine, mellow leather, with a very fine yellow color, of great durability; pronounced by all leather consumers [in New Braunfels] as of extra good quality.”⁶

Canaigre was one of my first introductions to intentional mislabeling of an herbal material for what was clearly intended for economic gain. This was fraud!

I obtained the approval of the HTA Board of Directors to address this situation. I then sought the assistance of some colleagues to confirm our position, principally my then-new mentor, colleague, and eventual friend (and, later, co-founder of the American Botanical Council) Professor Norman R. Farnsworth, PhD, of the University of Illinois at Chicago; and another new colleague and mentor (and now friend) Professor Ara DerMarderosian, PhD, of what was then called the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. Based on their information and literature references, I wrote the Policy Statement, which HTA sent to officials of the Natural Nutritional Foods Association (now the Natural Products Association), the leading industry trade association representing manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of what was then called the “health food industry” (the term “natural foods” was beginning to gain popularity at the time but was not prevalent). We also mailed or delivered hundreds of copies of the Policy Statement to health food stores where most of the fraudulent products were being distributed.

Within a few years, the fraudulent products were found in only a few stores and, eventually, the two (as I recall) companies that sold them were out of business.

This story marks the first time of which I am aware that an educational campaign resulted in the eventual removal, or the demise, of a fraudulent herbal product in the herb industry in the United States. Of course, the market has changed significantly in the past 40 years: Health food stores are no longer the almost-exclusive retail outlets for herbal products, being challenged by booming sales in mainstream market stores, direct sales organizations, and perhaps even more so by a myriad of products offered on the internet. Nevertheless, it offers a point in recent history in which an attempt to educate the marketplace successfully removed a fraudulent product, thereby hopefully resulting in a more reliable herb market for consumers.

Image credits:

Both images are of canaigre. ©2019 Steven Foster.

References

1. Blumenthal M. Policy Statement #1: Canaigre. Austin, TX: Herb Trade Association; May 1979.
2. Plants of Upper Newport Bay. Rumex hymenosepalus Torrey. Natural History of Orange County website. Available at: http://nathistoc.bio.uci.edu/Plants%20of%20Upper%20Newport%20Bay%20(Robert%20De%20Ruff)/Polygonaceae/Rumex%20hymenosepalus.htm. Accessed April 8, 2019.
3. Flora of North America Editorial Committee, ed. Flora of North America North of Mexico: Magnoliophyta: Caryophylllidae, Part 2. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2005;5:515.
4. Harrington HH, Adriance D. Canaigre: The New Tanning Plant. College Station, Texas: Agricultural Experiment States, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas; 1896.
5. Krochmal A, Paur S. Canaigre — A desert source of tannin. Economic Botany. October 1951;5(4):367-377.
6. Foster S. A brief history of adulteration of herbs, spices, and botanical drugs. HerbalGram. 2012;92:42-57.