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International Health Professional Groups Endorse ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants ProgramAcademy of Integrative Health and Medicine, Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium, American Herbalists Guild, and Irish Register of Herbalists
(AUSTIN, Texas, May 5, 2015) Four health practitioner groups have
offered their endorsement and support to the ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical
Adulterants Program. The Program is an international consortium of
nonprofit organizations, analytical laboratories, professional
scientists, healthcare practitioners, industry members, and others that
educates and provides advice about the various challenges related to
adulterated herbs, botanical extracts, and botanical ingredients in
commerce. The Academy of
Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM), the American Herbalists Guild
(AHG), the Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium (IHPC), and the
Irish Register of Herbalists (IRH) collectively represent hundreds of
thousands of integrative health practitioners across the United States
and Ireland. The
ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Program is a coalition of three
American nonprofit groups: the American Botanical Council (ABC), the
American Herbal Pharmacopoeia (AHP), and the University of Mississippi’s
National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR), with more than
140 other American and international parties supporting and cooperating
with the Program. Adulteration refers to the accidental or intentional
substitution or dilution of a material with an undisclosed, usually
lower-cost ingredient, thereby giving the consumer a false sense of the
value or quality of an ingredient or product containing such an
adulterated ingredient.
AIHM is a professional group that
brings together many different licensed integrative health
practitioners, including family doctors, acupuncturists, nurses,
psychologists, and doctors of oriental medicine, and advocates for
affordability and accessibility for patients. The Academy also offers
courses for continuing education in integrative medicine and healthcare
strategies. In a letter dated January 21, 2015, AIHM Executive Director
Nancy Sudak, MD, wrote, “We support [the Program’s] mission to preserve
botanical purity, and thank you for the effort that the [Program] has
made to expose the challenges associated with adulterated herbs in
commerce around the world. We will be proud to add our name to [the]
growing list of underwriters, endorsers, and supporters.”
Founded in 2003, IHPC advocates for an integrative healthcare system
with equal access to a full range of health-oriented, person-centered,
regulated healthcare professionals. IHPC represents more than 400,000
licensed professionals and, by extension, millions of patients,
regarding the advancement of integrative health in the United States.
The 25-year-old AHG promotes the profession of clinical herbalism and
access to herbal medicine. The Guild celebrates the diversity of the
practice and encourages the development of high education standards for
its members. AHG members range from those who practice traditional and
indigenous herbalism to modern clinical phytotherapy. AHG Executive
Director Mimi Hernandez, MS, RH(AHG), confirming the endorsement, wrote,
“The adulteration of herbal medicines throughout history has had a deep
impact on the integrity of professional herbalists and I am certain
that our membership will benefit from the important educational aspects
of the Program as well as the confidence attributed to a high-quality
supply chain of herbal medicines.”
The IRH is a professional association for traditional herbalists in
Ireland. “The IRH [supports] the Botanical Adulterants Program because
we strongly believe in the safety and efficacy of the herbs we use in
clinical practice,” wrote IRH Vice President Danny O’Rawe, ND. “As an
accountable professional organization for herbalists in Ireland of all
traditions, part of our role is to promote best practice throughout the
herbal sector and we have no hesitation in supporting this important
initiative to keep the herb chain free of adulteration and contamination
for the good of ourselves and future generations.”
“We are most grateful to these organizations of healthcare providers
for their expression of support for the Botanical Adulterants Program,”
said ABC Founder and Executive Director Mark Blumenthal. “Although much
of the Program is focused on educating members of industry about the
confirmed cases of adulteration of herbs, extracts, and other botanical
materials, we are also attempting to help educate other stakeholders in
the domain of herbal medicine, particularly healthcare providers who
recommend and/or utilize botanical preparations in their clinical
practice.”
The Botanical
Adulterants Program was previously endorsed by the National Institute of
Medical Herbalists, a 150-year-old organization representing herbal
medicine practitioners in the United Kingdom, and the British Herbal
Medicine Association. Other endorsing organizations of healthcare
professionals include the American Association of Naturopathic
Physicians, the Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental
Medicine, and the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute.
The Program has also been endorsed by leading organizations of
medicinal plant research scientists, including the American Society of
Pharmacognosy, the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product
Research (GA), and the Natural Health Products Research Society of
Canada.
The ABC-AHP-NCNPR
Botanical Adulterants Program has published extensively peer-reviewed
and referenced articles on the history of adulteration, adulteration of
the herbs black cohosh and skullcap, and adulteration of bilberry fruit
extract and so-called “grapefruit seed extract.” These open-access
articles are available on the Program’s webpage.
The Program also publishes a quarterly newsletter, “The Botanical
Adulterants Monitor,” which highlights new scientific publications
related to botanical authenticity and analysis to detect possible
adulteration, recent regulatory actions, and Program news. The latest
issue of the Monitor, released in March 2015, contains summaries of new
research on adulteration of botanicals used in Ayurvedic traditional
medicine in India, proanthocyanidin-containing extracts from fruit
sources, and true cinnamon, among others.
The Program recently released its first in a series of Laboratory
Guidance Documents to help industry and third-party analytical
laboratories determine the most effective analytical methods for
detecting adulteration and authenticating botanical raw materials and
extracts. The first of these was published on skullcap, an herb subject
to documented adulteration. Additional publications from the Program,
including Laboratory Guidance Documents on bilberry extract and black
cohosh, are scheduled for release in the coming months.
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