[MPWG] EU Ban on Herbal Medicines

[marguerite uhlmann-bower]

It happened.
Marguerite
Health shops’ fear over EU ban on herbal medicines

Published on 30 Apr 2011
 [image: 21304074468221]

Rebecca McQuillan

*CONSUMERS will no longer be able to buy certain herbal medicines over the
counter from tomorrow as a European directive regulating their sale comes
into force.*

As of May 1, individual herbal medicines must be licensed if they are to be
sold over the counter.

A total of 105 herbal medicines have been licensed so far under the UK
Government’s Traditional Herbal Registration scheme, which indicates a
product has met required standards of quality and safety, with about 100
more undergoing assessment.

Those that have not been licensed include meadowsweet for arthritis. Health
food shops may continue to sell unlicensed products until stocks ordered
before May 1 have run out. However, many shops in Scotland fear the
legislation will have an adverse effect.

Ainslie Friel, owner of Hanover Health Foods in Edinburgh, said he had
stocked up in advance, but added: “Obviously we’re not very pleased. People
are going to be looking overseas on the internet for products, so there’s a
moral jeopardy there.”

Josine Atsma, who recently became the owner of Stirling Health Food Store,
said she would have to stop selling products which currently account for
around 10% of her business. However, she believes it will just be a hiatus
as her main supplier is likely to have more products licensed over the
coming months.

The licences are granted, not to generic products such as echninacea, but to
individual products by particular manufacturers. Manufacturers must show
that each herb has 30 years of traditional use, 15 of which must be in the
EU.

Roger Craddock, group legal director at NBTY Europe, owners of Holland &
Barrett, said the company had committed to obtaining licences for its
products, even though the registration process was “extremely complex,
hugely time-consuming and expensive”.

He welcomed a change allowing medicinal claims to be made on product labels,
but said it was a “significant drawback” that modern herbs which could not
show the required 30 years’ of traditional use would now not be sold.

The Alliance for Natural Health, which campaigns for natural healthcare,
points out that among the products licensed so far, well under 100 plant
species are included out of a total of more than 1000 commonly used as
medicinal herbs. It adds that herbs used in the European tradition dominate
those granted licences so far, while not a single herbal remedy used in
Ayurveda (from India) and traditional Chinese medicine, has been approved.

The register, managed by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory
Agency, is being established to comply with an EU directive passed in 2004.

*The legislation states that unlicensed herbal medicines may still be used
in one instance – if prescribed by registered herbal medicines
practitioners. *

*However, as yet, no formal register of herbalists exists in the UK, even
though herbalists have been calling for statutory regulation of their
profession for more than a decade. *

*With herbalists facing significant restrictions on their ability to
practise unless they are formally registered, Westminster health secretary
Andrew Lansley announced in February that the Health Professions Council had
been tasked with establishing a statutory register of herbal practitioners,
part of a UK-wide unified approach. *

The register is likely to be set up in 2012, following consultation by the
Scottish Government, and only practitioners reaching certain standards of
training will be registered. Those practitioners will then have access to
the full range of herbal medicines when prescribing remedies to patients.

Michael McIntyre, chairman of the European Herbal and Traditional Medicines
Practitioners Association, said: “We are absolutely delighted the Government
has now at long last gone for statutory regulation of practitioners, without
which patients would lose access to a very wide range of herbal medicines.”
But some confusion exists over what will happen to herbalists who continue
to prescribe unlicensed products during the hiatus between now and the
setting up of the register, although they too will be permitted to carry on
prescribing unlicensed products until their pre-existing stocks run out.












-- 


" ... change the way you look at things, ... the things you look at change."

Wayne Dwyer

-- 

Marguerite Uhlmann-Bower
R.N., Herbalist, Reiki
Herbal Educational Services
226 Kelso Rd. / Sanders Lane
East Meredith, NY 13757
(607) 278-9635
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