Semester 4, Week 7, Day 4: Eleuthero Regulation

Noone got any decent sleep last night.  Today is going to be just great...   I have fed them breakfast but it won't last long.  I need to go cook something for them. I got one discussion post done yesterday and two herbariums are done and posted, alfalfa and astralagus. I did not do labs for these and won't while this semester is still in progress.  Some of these will already have a lab done because I made some tinctures.  I also didn't pull the sample out to check texture and such so these fields may be blank as well on future herbariums.  These will be updated at a later date as I buy more books so I'm not worried about them not getting updated in the future. Today, I need to find time to read for Health and Wellness because the discussion post needs me to read something in order to make a post.  I really need to get something up there today so my classmates can respond to it if they choose. If i can get that done, I'll either work on more herbariums or on the things that are actually due for class.  It's going to be "fun" though with children who didn't sleep and will be acting up until they get a nap. Love and Light!

On to the discussion.

"Select one of the herbs in the module and research and discuss the current regulatory status of the botanical in the United States, Canada, UK and Australia, as well as any regulatory actions or issue."
 
I decided to discuss the regulatory status of Eleuthero or Siberian Ginseng. I chose the “regulatory status” choice last week but I discovered one of my text books goes into these more and have learned more.  I’m using Mills and Bones (2010) again for the status and they do not include Canada.

Australia: Not on Part 4 of Schedule 4 of the Therapeutic Good Regulation. Since I delved deeper into this one last week, I won’t do it again this week.

China: It is listed in their Pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China.

UK/Germany: It is not on the General Sale list but gets a positive Commission E monograph. It is in the British Pharmacopoeia 2002 and the European Pharmacopoeia.

US: It is in the United States Pharmacopoeia -National Formulary but not considered Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS). Anyone can go into a store and see the vast amount of offering of this herb.

Even though I’m in the States and am governed by the rules of the FDA, I’m finding the rules in other countries to be interesting. As I was reading for Herb 521 last week and I got into the section on other countries, I found China very interesting.  Because of the politics there, with the different areas under different sets of laws because of wars and colonization, China has 3 sets of regulations on herbs.  Hong Kong and Taiwan get special treatment and I was surprised Shanghai does not.  Mills and Bone refer to the rules in China, not these special districts. Hong Kong uses Chinese Medicine Ordinance and Taiwan uses the Taiwan Herbal Pharmacopoeia which is written by the Department of Chinese Medicine of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Licensing exists in all three sets of laws to varying degrees. Under China, they discuss decoctions, specifically and state there are only 6 companies legal to make them. They don’t discuss specific individuals and their practices. In Hong Kong, herbal remedies must be licensed prior to sale, which includes the recipes. I see this a s a way to ensure the product will work because dosage, usage, etc are part of the licensing process. In Taiwan, finished products must be produced in accordance with the laws but bulk herbs are not monitored. Herbal treatments in what they term “traditional” texts are not monitored either. They only describe this as early 20th century or older. I tried finding the status of this herb in Hong Kong and Taiwan but failed. (Heinrich et al., 2018, p. 11)
Does anyone else see the word pharmacopoeia and think it’s missing a “u” or is that just me?
 
References
Mills, S. & Bone, K. (2010).  The Essential Guide to Herbal Safety. Elsevier Limited. P. 587-580.
Heinrich, M., Barnes, J., Garcia, J. M. P., Gibbons, S., and Williamson, E. M. (2018). Fundamentals of Pharmacognosy and Phytotherapy. Elsevier. P. 11.

Have a great day!