Industry Support for Botanical Adulterants Program

More than 50 natural products organizations and suppliers are getting behind the Botanical Adulterants Program, a series of white papers intended to provide self-regulation for the industry when it comes to accidental and intentional adulteration of botanical ingredients.

Initiated by the American Botanical Council (Austin, TX), the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia (Scotts Valley, CA), and the University of Mississippi’s National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR), the Botanical Adulterants Program intends to educate and self-regulate industry, with papers yielding information on how to detect the presence (or absence) of known adulterants in various botanical ingredients.

“[The program] will provide industry quality control laboratories and independent third-party labs the numerous tools and resources they need on how to identify many of the adulterants that are being documented in various herbal and plant-derived dietary ingredients,” said ABC founder and executive director Mark Blumenthal.

Editorial oversight comes from a committee of university scientists, government agencies, and third-party analytical labs with expertise in herbal QC. The first of this series of white papers provides a historical overview of accidental and intentional adulteration of botanical ingredients and is authored by botanical expert Steven Foster. It will appear in an upcoming November issue of ABC’s journal HerbalGram.