Richters HerbLetter


Date: 2002/03/31
Contents
1. Australians Spending Almost $1 Billion A Year on Natural Medicine
2. Retail Sales of Cosmeceuticals Top $5 Billion in 2001
3. Economic Crisis Forces Argentinians to Spend Less on Imported Spices
4. When A Glass of Juice is Worth a Pound of Cure
5. Panel Says Consumers Need to Know More about Alternative Medicine
6. St John’s Wort: A Natural Plant Remedy in the Fight Against Cancer
7. New Research Confirms Safety and Efficacy of Menopause Herb
8. Coffee Poses Only Minor Risk to Blood Pressure
9. More US Alternative Medicine Research Funding Urged
10. Mechanism of Herbal Supplement Effect on Prostate Cancer Studied
11. Global Information Network on Medicinal Plants Launches Website
12. Soy Isoflavone May Be Safe Alternative to Estrogen Replacement
13. Herbal Supplement Use Can Lead to Drug Addiction
14. Herbal Products Research Prompts Angry Response
15. Green Tea Catechins Can Protect Cartilage, Study Shows
16. Cognitive Impairment Increases with Long-term Heavy Cannabis Use
17. Chinese Scientists Save Rare Herb from Decline
18. Kava-Containing Dietary Supplements May Cause Liver Injury -- FDA
19. Kava Supplements May Harm Liver, U.S. FDA Says
20. Kava Product Warning Label Issued by Leading Herbal Association
21. Australians Urged to Avoid "Drink of Gods"
22. Seek Veterinarian’s Guidance Before Giving Kava to Pet
23. Three Hundred Vitamin and Supplement Products Face Ban in Euro Purge
24. Doctor Slams Ottawa for Allowing Sale of Ephedra and Ephredrine
25. Recall of Drug-Laced Prostate Herbal Supplement
26. Random Checks Target Banned Food Additives, Steviosides
27. Official Line Hard to Swallow on Stevia Food Additive
28. ‘Not Enough Done’ to Block Stevia Sales
29. Stevioside Row Seen as Latest Battle in Trade Wars with U.S.
30. Stevia: Innocent Herbal Sweetener Caught in Bureaucratic Panic
31. Stevia Sweetener Ban to Be Enforced Despite Mainland China View
32. Importers Flood Labs Seeking Tests for Banned Stevia Sweetener
33. Hong Kong Stevia Scare Hits 55 More Food Products
34. Random Checks on Snacks After Stevioside Scare
35. Closing the Loopholes for Stevioside
36. U.S. DEA Rule on Hemp Food Criticised by Congress Members
37. U.S. ‘Whitelist’ May Ban Interstate Movement of Plants, Herbs
38. U.S. Initiative to Ban Herbal Animal Supplements Feared
39. Appeals Court Blocks DEA Rule That Bans Foods Made With Hemp
40. Native Elders, Herbal Industry Discuss Threats to Medicinal Plants
41. The Global Trend Towards Herbal Medicine at Odds with Kenyan Trend
42. Kenyan University Gets Herbalists for Drugs Research Centre
43. Africa Unlocks Herbal Secrets to Fight AIDS
44. Chinese, Vietnamese Scientists Discuss Updating Traditional Medicine
45. Prince Charles Goes for Gold with a ‘Healing’ Garden at Chelsea
46. Seasoning Salt Becomes Recipe for Survival for Texas Businessman
47. Organic Pine Tree Extract to Control Weeds
48. Faster, Higher, Stronger: Confessions of an Ephedrine Junkie
49. Herb Business News

1. Australians Spending Almost $1 Billion A Year on Natural Medicine
By Nadia Miraudo

PERTH, Australia, Mar. 3, Australian Sunday Times -- Australians are spending almost $1 billion a year on natural remedies and therapies.

A growing number of people are looking to alternative ways of treating illnesses and ailments, paying $900 million each year for health products, including $309 million on complementary therapies.

More than 60 per cent of people are now using alternative therapies, consuming as much non-traditional medicine, vitamin and mineral supplements as prescription drugs.

Australian Institute of Holistic Medicine dean of studies Dr Sarath Jawayardana said an increasing number of people, including doctors and nurses, were becoming interested in natural medicine.

While conventional medicine was important, many people were looking at treatments they saw as less toxic and less likely to produce adverse reactions.

But he said it was important not to self-diagnose when using herbal remedies because some did not mix well with others.

"There are some drawbacks, but that’s because there are minimal regulations, which makes these remedies easy to access but people should get advice before taking them," Dr Jawayardana said.

A study published in The Medical Journal of Australia found acupuncture, hypnosis and meditation were well accepted by GPs.

More than 80 per cent of GPs had referred patients to natural therapists.

The study also found more than one in three GPs had trained in meditation, 23 per cent in acupuncture and vitamin therapy, 20 per cent in hypnosis, 12 per cent in herbal medicine and about 5 per cent in spiritual healing.

The study also found a "dramatic increase" in the reported use of non-orthodox therapies by the public.

The Australian Medical Association last week formally adopted a policy on complementary medicine.

AMA president Dr Kerryn Phelps said patients should discuss all medicines with their GP before taking them.

"It is important to avoid situations where treatments may work against each other," she said.

The AMA will ask the Federal Government to provide $1 million for research to evaluate the potential benefits and hazards of complementary therapies and medicines.


2. Retail Sales of Cosmeceuticals Top $5 Billion in 2001
NEW YORK, Mar. 7, PRNewswire -- The latest biochemical techniques have found a perfect consumer application in products that appeal to the oldest dreams of human vanity. Through the introduction of products with specialty ingredients, companies in the skincare, haircare and hair-growth arenas have created a multi-billion dollar market that has revolutionized the traditional personal care marketplace. The U.S. Cosmeceuticals Market, a newly published Packaged Facts report available at MarketResearch.com, examines the highly competitive cosmeceuticals categories and explores the new products in development, from anti-aging facial moisturizers and anti-cellulite thigh creams to hair growth preps and vitamin-and-herb-packed shampoos. The report states that the total sales for all three major market sectors passed the $5 billion mark in 2001, a sales increase of more than 9% from the previous year. Growth was lead by the hair care category, which rebounded from growth of 1.9% in 2000 to an astounding 14.9% growth in 2001.

While skin care is currently the largest category in the cosmeceuticals market, haircare may in fact be the market sector with the greatest potential. "About 56% of cosmeceutical sales come from the skin care sector," said Meg Hargreaves, VP of Research Publishing for MarketResearch.com. "However, with the recent introduction of herbal lines and the addition of specialty ingredients in haircare products, we are seeing tremendous growth and potential for continued strength in that sector."

The U.S. Cosmeceuticals Market provides detailed information about consumer demographics, as well as distribution and marketing trends, product development, and emerging promotional campaigns. The report also includes historical sales data, as well as market projections through the year 2005.

About Packaged Facts

Packaged Facts, a division of MarketResearch.com, produces research reports on a wide range of consumer industries, including information on domestic and global market trends and opportunities.

About MarketResearch.com

MarketResearch.com is the leading provider of global marketing intelligence products and services. With over 50,000 research publications from more than 350 top consulting and advisory firms, we offer instant online access to the world’s most extensive database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.


3. Economic Crisis Forces Argentinians to Spend Less on Imported Spices
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Mar. 27, El Cronista -- The economic crisis in Argentina is forcing people to spend less money in food. Therefore spice consumers are replacing imported products with national spices. Imported spices have suffered a 40% price rise. The company Sabores Argentinos (which controls the firms Poo and Layco) and La Virginia, owner of Alicante, capture more than 90% of the sales of this sector which generated sales for Pesos $100mil in 2001. The forecast for this year is a 10% reduction to Pesos $90mil, and a strong increase in sales of cheap brands which do not reach a 10% market share at the moment. Argentina produces 5,000 tons of spices annually, and it buys abroad 4,900 tons for a value of US$16.6mil. 61% of the exports go to Brazil, the United States and Uruguay. This sector exports 500 tons annually. The spices firm Poo had to call in the receivers with a Pesos $11mil debt of which Pesos $7.3mil is owed to banks.


4. When A Glass of Juice is Worth a Pound of Cure
By Miriam Shuchman

TORONTO, Mar. 12, Globe and Mail -- A billion-dollar cranberry company called Ocean Spray has been investing heavily in a laboratory in London, Ont. It’s not a great place to grow the tart berries. In fact, Canada’s cranberry bogs are in British Columbia and Quebec. But London is where University of Western Ontario microbiologist Gregor Reid has his lab. And he is an expert on the power of cranberries to wipe out bladder infections.

Bladder infections, also known as urinary-tract infections or UTIs, and sometimes called cystitis, can be extremely unpleasant. They cause frequent and painful urination, and can come with a sense of urgency, so that aperson keeps feeling as if she has to go right away. The experience is difficult enough to cause some people to miss work.

And they are one of the most common bacterial infections in women. Many of those who suffer from the problem are healthy people in their early twenties, although older women also get UTIs regularly.

A three-day course of antibiotics will cure the problem by killing off the offending bacteria. But the problem is, even when the infection is treated properly with antibiotics, UTIs can come back. It turns out that drinking cranberry juice regularly reduces the chance that the infection will recur.

Cranberry juice started out as a folk remedy. Then, in 1994, a group of Harvard researchers showed that after one to two months of drinking cranberry juice regularly, elderly women who were at risk for bladder infections got them less often. The research has continued. This past year, Dr. Reid and his colleagues at UWO showed that cranberry juice could also reduce the bacterial load in the bladder in another group at high risk for bladder infections -- patients with spinal-cord injuries.

Though it’s not yet mainstream, Dr. Reid is convinced that many women are experimenting with drinking cranberry juice to see if it will help keep the infection at bay. Some women don’t like the juice, but they take cranberry tablets or capsules that can be purchased at a health-food store.

"The concept of cranberry is that it produces a substance that interferes with the bacteria being able to bind to the bladder and cause an infection," says Dr. Reid. He’s not exactly sure what the substance is. "We don’t really know all the active ingredients in cranberry juice," he says. "But there does seem to be some antimicrobial effect."

Typically, when a woman comes in complaining of a bladder infection and the problem keeps recurring, doctors advise regular, low doses of antibiotics to prevent future infections. Or, a woman’s doctor may give her a standing prescription for antibiotics, telling her to fill it only when symptoms occur. The antibiotic usually prescribed is Bactrim. It’s been used to treat UTIs for more than two decades, and it works well. In most cases, it only needs to be taken for three days. (Not every UTI is so easily treated. In rare cases, a person may develop a fever, nausea and vomiting, flank pain or abdominal pain. Those are signs that the infection may involve the kidneys, and that a woman needs to see a doctor right away.)

Cranberry juice is used not as a treatment, but as a means of prevention. And since the regular, garden-variety UTI often comes back, many doctors are starting to recommend the juice.

It’s not necessarily risk-free. There have been some reports in medical journals that cranberry juice can increase the risk of developing kidney stones. Dr. Reid says there’s no proof of that, but he thinks that anyone using cranberry juice to ward off UTIs should use it in moderation. He advises drinking a small glass of cranberry juice with every meal. Some women have one large glass per day.

Given how common UTIs are, it’s easy to see why Ocean Spray is supporting Dr. Reid’s research. People who suffer from bladder infections form an enormous and potentially lucrative market. The problem accounts for more than eight million doctor’s visits per year in the United States and one million in Canada. The condition is so widespread that, in Ontario, one in five antibiotic prescriptions is written for a UTI.

But because it’s so treatable and not life-threatening, Dr. Reid and others have had trouble getting federal agencies to fund their work. So he’s grateful to the cranberry industry. "I applaud them," he says, "because they’ve been putting significant dollars into finding out the mechanism of the cranberry’s action."

[Miriam Shuchman, MD, teaches medical ethics at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Toronto. She is also board certified in psychiatry.]


5. Panel Says Consumers Need to Know More about Alternative Medicine
MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 1, Nutringredients.com -- The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (WHCCAM), a body set up to advise the US administration on how better to regulate the alternative medicine industry, has said that consumers need easier access to unbiased information about alternative treatments and medicines.

The commission is drafting recommendations and a report which is to be sent to Congress and the White House later this month, and it has called for a number of significant changes to the current policies in order to improve the quality of alternative medicine.

Among the draft recommendations is a call for more money from the federal government to fund controlled studies to ascertain which alternative therapies work.

The report suggests that more money should be provided for the National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, which already spends millions of dollars each year funding research into the vast array of alternative and complementary medicines.

Dr James S. Gordon, who chairs the WHCCAM, said that research into the safety and efficacy of alternative therapies should be "of neither a higher bar nor a lower bar" than research backing up traditional drugs and treatments.

Critics of alternative medicine have long complained that current legislation allows companies to sell vitamins, supplements and herbal remedies with no proof that they benefit health. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has also been criticised for not doing more to keep track of adverse events associated with some supplements on the market, a complaint which the commission has addressed in its report.

As well as calling for greater clarity on labels, the commission has recommended that practitioners of alternative medicine be obliged to post their credentials in their clinics, a move designed to weed out the growing number of unqualified people seeking to cash in on the growing interest in alternative therapies.

The WHCCAM also stressed the need for a comprehensive database of information on alternative medicine which was easily accessible to consumers and their physicians. Consumers spend millions of dollars on alternative therapies each year even though many of them are often unaware of the real benefits or side-effects.

"People just don’t have access to authoritative information from an unbiased source," he said. "A lot of the information that’s being purveyed is being purveyed by people who have something to gain, who have products to sell."


6. St John’s Wort: A Natural Plant Remedy in the Fight Against Cancer
By Martin Holcik

OTTAWA, Mar. 19, BioMedNet -- Cancer cells thrive because in addition to engaging their proliferative machinery they also suppress intrinsic cell death pathways. Signals that in normal cells result in the triggering of apoptosis fail to do so in cancer cells, often because of the acquired mutations in apoptotic pathways. Inducing apoptosis in the treatment of cancer is therefore a promising therapeutic opportunity. Indeed, many anticancer drugs that have different modes of action have one thing in common -- they kill cancer cells by triggering apoptosis.

Recently, Schempp et al. demonstrated that St John’s wort could join the ranks of anticancer drugs. St John’s wort is a popular over-the-counter mood enhancer venerated by natural medicine enthusiasts. One of the active ingredients of St John’s wort, the phloroglucin-derivative hyperforin, is a natural antibiotic that inhibits the growth of several Gram-positive bacteria. Schempp et al. now demonstrate that hyperforin also acts as a potent anticancer drug both in vitro and in vivo. The authors first evaluated the antiproliferative potential of hyperforin in 16 different human and rat cancer cell lines. In all but one case, hyperforin inhibited the growth of cancer cell lines even though many of these cell lines were resistant to other cytostatic drugs such as vincristine, paclitaxel and camptothecin. Analysis of the mode of action of hyperforin revealed that it killed cancer cells by inducing apoptosis that could be blocked by the caspase inhibitor zVAD.fmk. In fact, the treatment of cells with hyperforin resulted in the induction of caspase-3 and caspase-9 but not caspase-8, suggesting that hyperforin could have an effect on an intrinsic, mitochondria-mediated cell death pathway. Indeed, the mitochondria of hyperforin-treated cells underwent rapid loss of membrane potential. Interestingly, this loss of membrane potential could not be blocked by the pre-incubation of cells with zVAD.fmk. Instead, the treatment of cells with hyperforin induced a rapid release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria (the release of cytochrome c is essential for the initiation of mitochondria-mediated apoptosis). These results suggest that hyperforin acts by facilitating the release of cytochrome c (and perhaps other pro-apoptotic molecules) from mitochondria which in turn activates the apoptosome-associated caspase-9 and triggers the caspase cascade. Importantly, the activity of hyperforin was not limited to cultured cancer cells. When rats injected with rat mammary carcinoma cells were treated with hyperforin, it inhibited tumor growth to a similar extent as paclitaxel. Significantly, there was a complete lack of toxicity associated with the hyperforin treatment.

The discovery of a new anticancer drug is often accompanied by inflated claims of its therapeutic potential. Hyperforin, however, appears to fulfill several prerequisites for a good drug candidate: (1) it seems to have activity against a wide spectrum of cancer cells, (2) it has little or no toxicity, and (3) it can be easily obtained in large quantities from St John’s wort which is abundant throughout the world. Although it may be too soon to celebrate, the antitumour activity of hyperforin, and St John’s wort, is quite promising and warrants further investigations.

[Source: Schempp C. M et al. (2002). Inhibition of tumour cell growth by hyperforin, a novel anticancer drug from St John’s wort that acts by induction of apoptosis. Oncogene, 21:1242-1250.]


7. New Research Confirms Safety and Efficacy of Menopause Herb
PITTSBURGH, Mar. 25, PRNewswire -- A study published in the current issue of The Journal of Women’s Health and Gender-Based Medicine heralds good news for women who are looking for natural, estrogen-free options to relieve menopausal symptoms.

The study, conducted by Eckehard Liske, PhD and colleagues, shows that the commercially available dose of RemiFemin(R) Menopause, an exclusive extract of black cohosh available over-the-counter, works differently from estrogens and plant estrogens to relieve menopausal symptoms.

"This data confirms that RemiFemin provides a safe and effective option for women who want to relieve menopause symptoms naturally," said Eckehard Liske, PhD, lead author of the study. "The product reduces menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings, night sweats and occasional sleeplessness without affecting hormone levels or specific cell lines associated with some female cancers."

In addition to examining the product’s lack of estrogenic effect, the study compared the effectiveness and safety of two dosage forms of RemiFemin Menopause. After six months, the currently recommended daily dose (40 mg) showed similar benefits compared to a three-fold higher dose. Specifically, the study showed that the majority of women saw a 70% reduction in their physical and emotional menopausal symptoms when they took RemiFemin twice daily for 12 weeks. The results also show that doses above 40 mg per day do not demonstrate any significant therapeutic advantages nor does the higher dose result in a significantly greater number of side effects.

"These findings add to the large body of evidence that the currently available dose of RemiFemin Menopause results in statistically significant improvements in both physical and emotional menopausal symptoms in women," said Steven Weisman, PhD, a pharmacologist and herbal expert.

Study Design and Methods

This controlled, randomized, double blind, multi-center trial was conducted at four gynecological clinics in Poland in accordance with the Good Clinical Practice Guideline. The study included 150 peri- and postmenopausal women between the ages of 42 and 60 with moderate to severe menopause symptoms. The study was conducted over a 12-week treatment period, with the majority of women enrolling in a continuation study to 24 weeks. A number of scales were used to measure menopause symptoms, including the Kupperman Menopause Index and the Self-Rating Depression Scale.

Background

A third of American women -- more than 35 million -- are now perimenopausal, and between 50-80% of them will experience acute symptoms, such as hot flashes, mood swings and sleeplessness. As many as 85% of women who experience hot flashes have them for more than one year, and 25 to 50% have them for up to five years. As such, many women seek medical attention to alleviate their menopause symptoms.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is a commonly prescribed treatment for relief of distressing menopausal symptoms. While HRT has been used for years to relieve menopause symptoms and also protect bone health, there are a number of possible side effects associated with HRT that raise questions regarding the safety of HRT use in all women. Because HRT is contraindicated in certain populations, particularly in patients with estrogen sensitive cancers of the breast and uterus, natural, herbal treatments are gaining popularity for the relief of short-term symptoms of menopause.

While many herbal remedies have not been widely studied, there is an abundance of rigorous scientific data that support the safety and efficacy of black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) extracts -- sold under the name RemiFemin Menopause in the United States -- for the treatment of menopause symptoms. The German Commission E, a regulatory body established by the German Federal Health Authorities similar to the FDA, has approved black cohosh as a treatment for menopausal symptoms, and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has issued guidelines on the use of botanical menopause treatments, which consider black cohosh to be helpful for hot flashes.

RemiFemin Menopause is the most studied black cohosh supplement and has been the subject of numerous clinical trials as well as open-label studies monitoring its effects in physicians’ practices. More than 20 trials have been completed spanning more than 40 years. No serious drug interactions have been reported in 40 years of use under physicians’ supervision and adverse events have been limited to mild, transient stomach upset.

This research was funded by Schaper & Brummer, which manufactures RemiFemin for sale in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. RemiFemin is marketed in the United States by GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare. The product is widely available in U.S. supermarkets, pharmacies, drug stores chains, discount department stores and health food stores nationwide.

GlaxoSmithKline -- one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies -- is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer.

For a full bibliography of research on RemiFemin, visit www.remifemin.com/professional .


8. Coffee Poses Only Minor Risk to Blood Pressure
MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 26, Nutraingredients.com -- Coffee consumption has often been linked to a risk of high blood pressure, but the latest research shows that moderate consumption of the beverage, even over a period of 30 years, has little or no impact on hypertension.

According to a report on BBC News Online, the study carried out by researchers at Johns Hopkins University suggests that a couple of cups of coffee a day may do no harm.

The researchers investigated the effects of coffee consumption on 1,000 or so white males who graduated from the university’s medical school between 1948 and 1964, the report said. The vast majority of the graduates were coffee drinkers -- drinking, on average, about two cups a day.

Their coffee intake was checked more than 10 times over the following three decades to see whether any increases in blood pressure could be linked to increases in coffee consumption. The researchers found that there was no evidence that coffee could be connected to anything more than tiny increases in blood pressure.

The research from the US is the latest in a long line of studies focusing on the beneficial or detrimental effects of coffee. The BBC report said that pregnant women in the UK were recently advised to drink no more than four cups a day because of worries that heavy consumption could increase the risk of miscarriage, and also cited reports claiming that coffee may contain chemicals linked to heart attacks and strokes.


9. More US Alternative Medicine Research Funding Urged
WASHINGTON, Mar. 25, Reuters -- The U.S. government should increase funding for research to see if various types of alternative treatments, which can range from dietary supplements to acupuncture or meditation, are safe and effective, a federal commission said on Monday.

The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, know by its acronym CAM and established by former President Bill Clinton, said most alternative treatments "have not yet been scientifically studied and found to be safe and effective."

"The commission believes that conventional and CAM systems of health and healing should be held to the same rigorous standards of good science," the panel said in its final report, issued on Monday.

"Therefore, substantially more funding for research is needed to determine the possible benefits and limitations" of various treatments, the report said.

Complementary and alternative medicine is hard to define, the commission noted, but its report included mentions of dietary supplements, chiropractors, acupuncture, massage, biofeedback and yoga.

The report was issued on the same day that federal regulators warned consumers that kava, an herb used in dietary supplements and said to promote relaxation, may be linked to rare cases of severe liver injury.

Use of alternative treatments has risen steadily during the past 30 years, the commission said, with one estimate saying as much as 43 percent of the U.S population had tried some type of alternative therapy.

The 20-member White House commission is chaired by Dr. James Gordon, a psychiatrist who heads the Washington-based Center for Mind-Body Medicine.

Two commissioners wrote a separate statement criticizing the report, saying its recommendations "do not appropriately acknowledge the limitations of unproven and unvalidated CAM interventions or adequately address the minimization of risk."

While supporting many of the panel’s recommendations, Dr. Joseph Fins and Dr. Tieraona Low Dog said they hoped their critique would "give voice to the healthy skepticism" that many Americans have toward alternative treatments.

In addition to advocating more research funding, the report urged the government to help develop and circulate accurate information about alternative therapies.

The commission also called for more training and regulation of alternative medicine practitioners and urged health insurance companies to offer coverage for proven treatments.


10. Mechanism of Herbal Supplement Effect on Prostate Cancer Studied
By TC Hsieh and JM Wu

VALHALLA, N.Y., Mar. 1, International Journal of Oncology -- PC-SPES is a herbal mixture used by prostate cancer patients as an alternative form of treatment. Since PC-SPES is derived from eight individual herbs, each with distinct as well as overlapping properties, it is of interest to investigate whether a particular herb in the formulation principally accounts for the biological properties of PC-SPES. We tested the ability of extracts from individual herbs, using amounts estimated to be equivalent to that present in the herbal mixture, to suppress LNCaP cell growth and/or lower PSA expression, in comparison with cells treated with PC-SPES.

Cells were incubated with 0, 1, and 5 microl/ml of single herbal extract for 72 h and proliferation/viability was measured by trypan blue exclusion.

LNCaP cells treated with 5 microl/ml ethanol extracts of PC-SPES showed a 72-80% reduction in cell growth, and had a similar decrease in cell viability. These results contrasted with cells incubated with 5 microl/ml of individual herbal extract, which suppressed growth in the following order: Dendranthema morifolium Tzvel (85.2% reduction) > Panax pseudo-ginseng (80.9%) > Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch (73%) > Rabdosia rubescens Hara (70.8%) > Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (66.5%) > Ganoderma lucidum Karst (63.5%) > Isatis indigotica Fort (50.0%) > Serenoa repens (14.5%). Analysis of efficacy of individual herbs to control intracellular/secreted PSA levels and the expression of AR and PSA revealed that only Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch, Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi and Serenoa repens lowered intracellular and secreted PSA, while the remaining herbs actually increased PSA expression. Also, no uniform response in AR/PSA was observed in individual herb treated cells, contrary to PC-SPES, which elicited a coordinated change in AR/PSA.

Lack of concordance between changes in prostate cell growth and prostate specific gene expression makes it unlikely that the activity of a single herb can account for the overall effects of PC-SPES.

[Source: Int J Oncol 2002 Mar; 20:583-8]


11. Global Information Network on Medicinal Plants Launches Website
OTTAWA, Mar. 6, IDRC -- MEDPLANT the Global Information Network on Medicinal Plants was created in 1999 as a support to the existing medicinal plant networks. Over the last several months MEDPLANT has been working with its partners to develop a communication tool for sharing information and facilitating discussions. Thanks to support from IDRC and Bellanet, MEDPLANT is proud to announce the creation of an interactive website at http://source.bellanet.org/medplant/.

The Website allows you to: submit and view news, documents and links; link to other medicinal plant websites; work on documents with colleagues from around the world; and participate in discussion forums (online or using email only!). You can submit a resource in any language (although we appreciate an abstract in English!). We are very excited to present this resource to you and trust it will become a useful tool for you and other organizations working in the field of medicinal plants around the world.


12. Soy Isoflavone May Be Safe Alternative to Estrogen Replacement
NEW YORK, Mar. 4, Reuters Health -- Daily soy isoflavone use significantly reduces menopausal symptoms in postmenopausal women and may also help prevent cardiovascular disease, according to a report published in the March issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Furthermore, because isoflavones have estrogenic and anti-estrogenic effects depending on the target tissue, their use may not predispose to endometrial cancer as estrogen replacement therapy does.

Dr. Edmund C. Baracat and colleagues, from the Federal University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, randomized 80 postmenopausal women with climacteric symptoms to receive placebo or 100 mg of soy isoflavone daily for 4 months.

Isoflavone-treated women experienced a significant improvement (p < 0.01) in menopausal symptoms relative to baseline scores and to improvements in the placebo group, the investigators state.

Treatment with isoflavone was linked to a significant reduction in total cholesterol and LDL levels compared with baseline (p < 0.001) and the placebo group (p < 0.01), but appeared to have no effect on blood pressure, plasma glucose, HDL levels, and triglyceride levels.

Transvaginal sonography revealed that isoflavone therapy was not associated with an increase in endometrial thickness.

The current findings indicate that an "isoflavone treatment regimen may be a safe and effective alternative therapy for postmenopausal symptoms," the authors note. "Another benefit is a decrease in LDL levels, which suggests a positive effect on the cardiovascular system."

[Source: Obstet Gynecol 2002;99:389-394.]


13. Herbal Supplement Use Can Lead to Drug Addiction
MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 12, Nutraingredients.com -- Teenagers who use herbal products are more likely to move on to more harmful drugs such as cigarettes, alcohol and narcotics, according to a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Adolescent Medicine in the US.

"Kids who used a herbal product were almost six times as likely to use cocaine, almost seven times as likely to use methamphetamine, almost nine times as likely to use heroin, and about eight items as likely to use other illegal drugs," said Dr Susan Yussman of the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York.

She assessed data from a 1999 survey of a random sample of more than 2,000 high school students living in Monroe County, New York, and found that almost 29 per cent of students said they used herbal products to either feel better or perform better in sports or school. These students were also found to be much more likely to be using other drugs as well, she discovered.

"We should definitely be asking our adolescents what herbal products they are using," Dr Yussman said. "This could potentially be a marker for needing a thorough, in-depth substance abuse history."

Nearly 25 per cent of first year students used herbal products, rising to 30 per cent for older students. Supplement use was more common among Hispanics (33 per cent), followed by whites (31 per cent) and Asians, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders (29 per cent). African Americans accounted for just 12 per cent.


14. Herbal Products Research Prompts Angry Response
MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 14, Nutraingredients.com -- Research suggesting that teenagers who use herbal products are more likely to go on to use drugs such as cigarettes, alcohol and narcotics has met with an angry response from the herbal products industry. Dr Susan Yussman, the lead author of the report, said that she had been inundated with phone calls and emails since she had presented her findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Adolescent Medicine in the US earlier this week.

"The phone has not stopped ringing," she said. "The research has generated a lot of interest, mostly from the herbal supplement industry defending their products." She told NutraIngredients.com: "I think the most important thing to remember is that this was cross-sectional, not longitudinal, data from only 2006 high school students in Monroe County, NY in 1999. Therefore, one cannot make any direct causative or correlational assumptions, nor can one generalise to the general teen population in the US, or anywhere, for that matter.

"The only question regarding herbal products asked in the Monroe County Youth Risk Behavior Survey was: ‘In your lifetime, how many times have you taken herbal or other natural products, either to make you feel better, or to help you perform better at sports or school?’ Our study is limited in that we have no information on which products these teens took. Therefore, we are in the process of collecting our own data on a random sample of adolescents across the US in much more detail to see if these results hold true."

Dr Yussman’s research showed that children who used a herbal product were almost six times as likely to use cocaine, almost seven times as likely to use methamphetamine, almost nine times as likely to use heroin, and about eight items as likely to use other illegal drugs.

"Herbal product use is common, and is strongly associated with illicit drug use among high school students. Health care providers should inquire about adolescents’ herbal product use, and disclosure should prompt an in-depth substance abuse history," she concluded. "This research is pretty misleading," Nicholas Friedman of the Advanced Natural Health Center told NutraIngredients.com. "First of all what herbs are we talking about? Secondly, what are they using the herbs for? Thirdly how are they taking them?" "Herbs have been around a lot longer than pharmaceutical medicines and herbs are still used today for many different health care problems. The individuals using them range from infants all the way to the elderly. Do we need to be taking prescription medications for everything, including shyness? Herbs are much safer than pharmaceutical drugs."

Whether that final statement is correct is an entirely separate debate, of course, but it will certainly be interesting to see if Dr Yussman’s additional research shows any more concrete links. Even then, the herbal products industry is unlikely to be convinced, since the excessive consumption of one particular product by an individual is hardly likely to be an indictment of the whole industry. Nonetheless, we will await the new data with interest.


15. Green Tea Catechins Can Protect Cartilage, Study Shows
MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 8, Nutraingredients.com -- The catechins found in green tea may benefit arthritis patients by reducing the degradation of cartilage, according to an in vitro study conducted at the University of Sheffield Medical School in the UK. The new research, published in the March issue of the Journal of Nutrition (132:341-46, 2002), was based on the premise that the catechins (polyphenolic compounds) found in green tea can reduce arthritis inflammation.

"Polyphenolic compounds from green tea have been shown to reduce inflammation in a murine model of inflammatory arthritis, but no studies have been undertaken to investigate whether these compounds are protective to joint tissues," said David Buttle, one of the study’s authors.

The researchers studied bovine and human cartilage samples, which were cultured with and without reagents known to accelerate cartilage breakdown, and then catechins were added to the mix. They found that catechins, and particularly those containing a gallate ester, effectively prevented collagen breakdown. Furthermore, no toxic effects were noted.

Researchers concluded that some green tea catechins may be protective to cartilage. In addition, they stated that the consumption of green tea might prevent arthritis damage and benefit patients by reducing inflammation and slowing cartilage breakdown. However, they stressed that additional studies are required to determine whether catechins can effectively prevent cartilage breakdown in humans.

[Source: Journal of Nutrition 132:341-46, 2002]


16. Cognitive Impairment Increases with Long-term Heavy Cannabis Use
Mar. 1 -- A neuropsychological study in three U.S. cities between 1997 and 2000 showed that long-term heavy cannabis users develop impaired memory and attention that endure beyond the period of intoxication and worsen with increasing years of regular cannabis use.

A team of researchers tested attention, memory and executive functioning in 102 heavy cannabis users in Seattle, Farmington, Conn., and Miami. Half of the subjects were classed long-term users (mean 23.9 years) and the other half were classed short-term users (mean 10.9 years).

Long-term cannabis users performed significantly less well than shorter-term users on tests of memory and attention while shorter-term users performed no differently compared to a control group. Long term users showed significant impairment in learning, retention and retrieval. Performance correlated significantly with the duration of cannabis use, being worse with increasing years of use. Performance showed no relationship to withdrawal symptoms, and persisted after cannabis use and other drug use were brought under control.

[Source: JAMA 287:1123-1131]


17. Chinese Scientists Save Rare Herb from Decline
NANNING, Mar. 4, Xinhua -- Chinese scientists have succeeded in using biological technology to save Momordica grosvenori Swingle from degeneration.

Momordica grosvenori is a rare species of herbal liana, the fruit of which, rich in glucoside, amino acids and vitamins, is commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine for treating diseases such as faucitis and bronchitis. Medical research has proved that the fruit is also effective for preventing cancer.

A research team led by Li Bolin, a botanist at Guangxi Normal University, has succeeded in developing a new generation of quality seedlings by using high technology, and lianas grown from these seedlings are now doing well.

"We have got shoots from a healthy liana, been blessed with healthy and quality cells by way of physically- and chemically-induced mutation and cultivated new seedlings through cloning," explained Li, adding that in their experimental fields in suburban Guilin City the lianas planted with the new generation of seedlings bear more fruit.

In addition, 80 percent of the lianas bear fruit the next year after planting, and the extraction rate of herbal content goes up by five percent to ten percent.

Researchers from China, Japan and the United States have succeeded in extracting from liana fruits a kind of glucoside essence, which is over 300 times sweeter than common sugar but will not result in fatness, and is therefore used to treat diabetes, obesity, hypertension and heart disease.

According to Li, his university is cooperating with an American cancer prevention foundation to develop new medicine from liana fruit.

An official with the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine said Chinese scientists use high technology such as cellular technology to save rare herbal plants including the Momordica grosvenori, and this will contribute enormously to the improvement of human health worldwide.

China is home to over 10,000 kinds of herbal plants, most of which grow in the wild. Some species, including Momordica grosvenori have shown signs of variation and degeneration due to artificial planting over many years.


18. Kava-Containing Dietary Supplements May Cause Liver Injury -- FDA
WASHINGTON, Mar. 25, FDA -- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is advising consumers of the potential risk of severe liver injury associated with the use of kava-containing dietary supplements. Kava (Piper methysticum) is a plant indigenous to the islands in the South Pacific where it is commonly used to prepare a traditional beverage. Supplements containing the herbal ingredient kava are promoted for relaxation (e.g., to relieve stress, anxiety, and tension), sleeplessness, menopausal symptoms and other uses. FDA has not made a determination about the ability of kava dietary supplements to provide such benefits.

Liver-related risks associated with the use of kava have prompted regulatory agencies in other countries, including those in Germany, Switzerland, France, Canada, and the United Kingdom, to take action ranging from warning consumers about the potential risks of kava use to removing kava-containing products from the marketplace. Although liver damage appears to be rare, FDA believes consumers should be informed of this potential risk.

Kava-containing products have been associated with liver-related injuries -- including hepatitis, cirrhosis, and liver failure -- in over 25 reports of adverse events in other countries. Four patients required liver transplants. In the U.S., FDA has received a report of a previously healthy young female who required liver transplantation, as well as several reports of liver-related injuries.

Given these reports, persons who have liver disease or liver problems, or persons who are taking drug products that can affect the liver, should consult a physician before using kava-containing supplements.

Consumers who use a kava-containing dietary supplement and who experience signs of illness associated with liver disease should also consult their physician. Symptoms of serious liver disease include jaundice (yellowing of the skin or whites of the eyes) and brown urine. Non-specific symptoms of liver disease can include nausea, vomiting, light-colored stools, unusual tiredness, weakness, stomach or abdominal pain, and loss of appetite.

FDA urges consumers and their health care professionals to report any cases of liver and other injuries that may be related to the use of kava-containing dietary supplements. Adverse events associated with the use of dietary supplements should be reported as soon as possible to FDA’s MedWatch program by calling their toll-free number (1-800-332-1088) or through the Internet (http://www.fda.gov/medwatch).

The presence of kava in a supplement should be identified on the product label in the "Supplement Facts" box. The following are commonly used names for kava: ava, ava pepper, awa, intoxicating pepper, kava, kava kava, kava pepper, kava root, Piper methysticum.

FDA will continue to investigate the relationship, if any, between the use of dietary supplements containing kava and liver injury. The agency’s investigation includes attempting to determine a biological explanation for the relationship and to identify the different sources of kava in the U.S. and Europe. The agency will alert consumers, and if warranted, take additional action as more information becomes available.


19. Kava Supplements May Harm Liver, U.S. FDA Says
By Lisa Richwine

WASHINGTON, Mar. 25, Reuters -- Kava, a herb used in dietary supplements and said to promote relaxation, may be linked to rare cases of severe liver injury, U.S. regulators warned consumers on Monday.

The Food and Drug Administration said it had not yet determined whether kava was responsible for liver damage but felt consumers should be aware of the potential risk.

The FDA said it had received a report of a previously healthy young woman who required liver transplantation as well as several reports of liver-related injuries in people taking kava products.

Outside the United States, kava has been associated with 25 reports of liver-related injury, including hepatitis, cirrhosis and liver failure, the FDA said in its advisory to consumers.

"FDA will continue to investigate the relationship, if any, between the use of dietary supplements containing kava and liver injury," the FDA said, adding it would alert consumers if necessary as more information becomes available.

Patients who have liver problems or who are taking drugs that can affect their livers, should consult a physician before taking kava-containing supplements, the FDA said.

Also, anyone taking kava should contact a doctor if they experience possible signs of liver problems, such as yellowing of the skin or whites of the eyes or brown urine.

Other symptoms of liver disease can include nausea, vomiting, light-colored stools, tiredness, weakness, stomach or abdominal pain and loss of appetite.

Countries including Germany, Switzerland, France, Canada and Britain have taken action on kava ranging from warnings to removing kava products from the market.

Industry groups representing dietary supplement makers did not quarrel with the FDA’s advice, noting that several companies have included cautions about kava use on their product packaging. The groups stressed, however, that the FDA had not ruled that kava caused liver damage.

"The jury is still definitely out," said Robin Gellman, a spokeswoman for the American Herbal Products Association, adding that "consumers need to read the FDA advisory. That’s important information."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group, said it was pleased with the FDA’s action, adding "we urge consumers to steer clear of kava altogether unless directed otherwise by a physician."

Kava, a plant found in South Pacific islands, is an ingredient in dietary supplements promoted for a variety of uses, including relaxation and treatment of sleeplessness and symptoms of menopause. Kava commonly is served in a traditional drink in the South Pacific.

The FDA urged consumers and physicians to report any cases of liver or other injuries that may be related to kava use.

The FDA advisory can be found on the agency’s Web site at http:/www.cfsan.fda.gov/dms/addskava.html.


20. Kava Product Warning Label Issued by Leading Herbal Association
SILVER SPRING, Md., Mar. 27, PRNewswire -- The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) yesterday adopted new cautionary language to appear on food or dietary supplement products containing the popular herb kava (Piper methysticum), commonly used for anxiety and stress.

Earlier this year, the Association outlined specific health information that consumers should take into consideration prior to taking kava and provided this information to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The safety of the South Pacific Herb began to be re-examined when rare case reports in the United States and Europe suggested a potential relationship between the use of kava-containing dietary supplements and liver injury.

"Although no actual relationship between the use of kava and any liver problem has been established by the FDA or any scientific reviewers, it is sensible that consumers of kava are informed in the light of the recent case reports," said Michael McGuffin, President of the American Herbal Products Association.

AHPA originally adopted a label for kava products in 1997 to restrict against use by children or by pregnant or nursing women and to caution against use with alcohol or when driving. The new policy retains all of those earlier parts and adds the following language:

Caution: Ask a healthcare professional before use if you have or have had liver problems, frequently use alcoholic beverages, or are taking any medication. Stop use and see a doctor if you develop symptoms that may signal liver problems (e.g., unexplained fatigue, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, fever, vomiting, dark urine, pale stools, yellow eyes or skin).

"This revision reflects the concerns identified by the recent U.S. and European cases," said McGuffin. "The message provided here is consistent with the consumer information we have published since January and with the advisory issued from FDA."

Monday, the FDA cautioned consumers about the potential link, citing approximately 25 reports of liver-related injuries in other countries and several reports of liver problems in the United States. The FDA reiterated that the cases appear to be extremely rare and acknowledged that kava might not be responsible for the problems.

Founded in 1983, The American Herbal Products Association is the leading botanical trade association representing growers, processors, manufacturers and marketers of herbal products.


21. Australians Urged to Avoid "Drink of Gods"
By Belinda Goldsmith

CANBERRA, Mar. 7, Reuters -- Australia on Thursday joined European nations and Canada in warning people against over-the-counter medicines containing kava, a plant used by Pacific islanders to concoct a mildly narcotic drink.

Growing health concerns about kava or Piper methysticum plant, a member of the pepper family, have thrown a spanner in South Pacific plans to turn it into a big export crop, straining already frail island economies.

Australia’s parliamentary secretary for health Trish Worth said the effects of kava had never been studied thoroughly but there were indications in Europe, where kava has been banned by some countries, that it could be linked to severe liver damage.

The age-old herbal drink, used in a range of social and formal ceremonies, numbs the mouth but also acts as a relaxant, prompting its use in alternative drugs and herbal supplements to promote sleep, relieve stress and ease pain.

It is the drink of choice across Polynesia and in the Melanesian island nation of Vanuatu.

In some countries, like Fiji, the cloudy brownish drink is brewed in large wooden bowls, the plant’s roots ground to a pulp and mixed with water or coconut milk. Elsewhere, islanders still make kava the traditional way -- by spitting in it.

Worth said use of kava could induce symptoms like tiredness, loss of appetite, mild fever, nausea, bleeding and jaundice.

She said little was also known about how kava interacts with other medicines, prompting a warning from Australia’s drug watchdog, the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

"The Therapeutic Goods Administration has advised while there have not been any reports of liver damage related to kava use in Australia, consumers as well as healthcare professionals should be alert for any possible signs," Worth said in a statement.

"Anyone using kava-containing medicines should seek medical advice if they experience any unexplained symptoms."

She said anyone at special risk of liver damage, such as those who have existing liver disease, should avoid the 84 medications containing kava currently on sale in Australia.

International Action

British authorities have already negotiated with the herbal food industry for a voluntary withdrawal of kava from stores, citing reports from Germany and Switzerland that six people suffered liver failure after using kava, and one died.

The Swiss government has banned the sale of all products containing kava extract and German drugs group Merck KGaA withdrew two non-prescription drugs last year.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is also investigating kava after 38 adverse reports and Canada has urged consumers to avoid kava until questions about its safety are settled.

The global concerns dismay South Pacific nations, where $200 million worth of kava has been planted for export.

At a recent meeting of South Pacific officials in Sydney, Samoan Finance Minister Misa Telefoni said Samoa had appointed a special task force to seek a solution.

Vanuatu’s Finance Minister, Joe Baumol Carlo, said adverse medical reports were not the fault of kava.

"Kava is the drink of the gods. But it has been doctored and derivatives added by pharmaceutical companies," he said.

Kidney disease is a problem in the South Pacific, but it is blamed on extremely high rates of diabetes caused by poor diets.


22. Seek Veterinarian’s Guidance Before Giving Kava to Pet
By Dr. Shawn Messonnier

DALLAS, Mar. 27, Dallas Morning News -- Q. I recently heard about a warning concerning kava. Do you know anything about this? Is it safe to use for my cat?

A. What you are referring to was a notice released several months ago. Apparently, there were about 30 or so humans in Germany and some surrounding countries that experienced severe reactions (including death) after taking kava. Kava, used instead of medications such as valium for anxiety disorders in people and pets, has had a long history of safe use in Europe when patients followed their doctors’ guidelines.

I have never had a problem using a herbal product containing kava for cats and dogs with anxiety. I recently spoke with the manufacturer and doctor who developed the specific product I use; they have never had any reported problems.

My recommendation is that, like any product, kava should only be prescribed by your veterinarian after properly assessing the patient. Your concern reaffirms what I have repeatedly stated, that even natural therapies can cause harm.

Although it is true that most natural therapies are much safer and less expensive than many traditional medications, owners should not treat pets without veterinary advice.

Almost every substance can be toxic; it’s ultimately the dose that determines safety. Your doctor can recommend a safe supplement for your cat after an evaluation.

Q. I have been using the BARF diet for my dog for several years.

Recently, his blood profile showed elevated BUN (blood urea nitrogen, which helps measure kidney function) and creatinine values, and my veterinarian wants to do more testing and possibly treatment.

Is it possible the diet is causing these problems?

A. The BARF diet, which stands for Bones and Raw Food, is popular with many owners who want to pursue a holistic approach to pet care. Many pets do better on homemade diets such as the BARF diet. However, one drawback is that we don’t have any studies that show normal values for BARF-fed animals compared with animals eating processed foods.

Having said that, here are some guidelines. If the BUN or creatinine doses are at least 1 { to two times or more higher than normal, this is unlikely to be related to the diet and needs to be evaluated. Mild elevations of these enzymes may be normal but should be closely followed.

[Dr. Shawn P. Messonnier, author of the "Natural Health Bible for Dogs & Cats" (Prima, $24.95) is a veterinarian and pet care advocate.]


23. Three Hundred Vitamin and Supplement Products Face Ban in Euro Purge
By Celia Hall

LONDON, Mar. 11, Telegraph -- Ninety per cent of multi-vitamin and mineral preparations and many other supplements are likely to be removed from the shelves of British health shops and chemists if a European directive becomes law, as many expect it will, on Wednesday.

Under a move to harmonise the sale of vitamin and mineral supplements, lists have been drawn up of permissible supplements and their sources which exclude more than 300 items available in Britain.

The supplements which will be affected are those offering dozens of vitamins and minerals in one capsule.

Dr Caroline Jackson, Conservative MEP for the South West Region who is fighting the proposals, said: "MEPs are receiving dozens of letters from desperate people who believe their future health depends on being able to buy these products.

"Many people believe these supplements are vital to them. This is heavy-handed legislation which I believe should be withdrawn but all we may be able to do is a damage limitation exercise."

The only hope will be to get the provisions changed during the lengthy committee process, to settle details, which will be held after the directive is approved, she added.

Dr Jackson said the problem was that British laws governing the sale of vitamin and mineral supplements were liberal -- as they were in Holland and Ireland -- but very restrictive in countries like Germany.

The effect of harmonising the regulations will be to impose strict German standards on UK sales. Sue Croft, of Consumers for Health Choice, a European consumer lobby group, said many people with cancer and chronic disease used supplements to maintain health.

"This is hugely upsetting to large numbers of people who will feel absolutely bereft if they cannot get their supplements and who may suffer psychological damage as result."

Examples of supplements not on the list include the minerals, boron, sulphur and vanadium, commonly used in multi supplements.

Boron is important for healthy teeth and bones, and found in raisins, prunes and almonds; sulphur for acne and healthy skin and found in cabbage, dried beans, and eggs. Vanadian deficiency is linked with bone deformity. Naturally it is found in seafood, parsley, cereals and mushrooms.

Manufacturers will be able to make a case for supplements to be put on the list if they can prove their efficacy and safety, but many small companies do not have the resources for this kind of research trial.

Free Choice for Supplements Alliance, which represent makers, said there were 1,300 independent health food retailers in Britain, many of them unaware of the impending legislation.

In the UK, vitamin and mineral supplements are now a huge market worth Ł376 million in 2001. Direct sales are estimated to add Ł60-Ł70 million to this total.


24. Doctor Slams Ottawa for Allowing Sale of Ephedra and Ephredrine
VANCOUVER, B.C., Mar. 4, CP -- The Canadian federal government is shirking its responsibility by allowing the sale of products containing a potentially dangerous drug that people are using to lose weight, says the medical director of Canada’s largest eating-disorders program.

Dr. Laird Birmingham said the herb ephedra -- or ephedrine, its chemical derivative -- is the most commonly used weight-loss supplement among his patients suffering from anorexia and bulimia.

He said ephedra, also known as ma huang, can cause strokes, seizures, hypertension, psychosis and depression.


25. Recall of Drug-Laced Prostate Herbal Supplement
NEW YORK, Mar. 26, Wall Street Journal -- The recall of herbal supplement PC-Spes has underscored the lack of adequate regulation of herbal products. PC-Spes, made from Chinese herbs, was ordered recalled by the California Department of Health Services last month, after traces of prescription blood-thinning drug warfarin were discovered on some of the supplement’s bottles. The oversight of the manufacturing process of herbal supplements falls on the Food and Drug Administration, which ensures their safety and regulates general health claims. However, manufacturing requirements for supplements are not as strict as those for prescription drugs and the submission of results of clinical trials are not mandatory. PC-Spes have been supposedly beneficial to around 10,000 American men suffering from advanced prostrate cancer.

[Abstracted from: The Wall St Journal (US Edition)]


26. Random Checks Target Banned Food Additives, Steviosides
By Angela Li

HONG KONG, Mar. 29, South China Morning News -- Random checks will be conducted on food products to try to detect additives banned in Hong Kong but allowed overseas, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said yesterday.

Deputy Director (Food and Public Health) Dr Mak Sin-ping told a Legco panel she believed the move would improve food surveillance.

Under the proposal, the Government would conduct random checks on popular imported food items which may contain additives.

The administration currently only conducts random checks on food samples containing 10 permitted food additives and tests whether the contents match what is listed on the label.

Dr Mak said officials would seek the co-operation of food exporters to try to stop the importation of banned additives into Hong Kong.

Last week officials pulled dozens of popular Japanese food products from shelves after discovering the imports contained a sweetener -- stevioside -- which is linked to cancer and infertility. From Monday, 71 food items have been identified as containing the sweetener.

The department’s Assistant Director, Dr Gloria Tam Lai-fan, said the recall was ‘basically complete’.

She said the department was still considering whether to pursue prosecutions.

Dr Mak said legal advice would be sought and each case looked at when deciding whether to take legal action against exporters.

She also said legislation was planned for this year to tighten existing labelling laws.


27. Official Line Hard to Swallow on Stevia Food Additive
By Tim Hamlett

HONG KONG, Mar. 28, South China Morning Post -- Maybe I did not concentrate enough in Form Four chemistry, but some aspects of last week’s stevioside scare seemed difficult to understand.

The Government suddenly swooped on a variety of shops to stop them selling food products -- mostly snacks or instant noodles -- containing stevioside, which officials described as an artificial sweetener.

Stevioside is a natural sweetener extracted from stevia leaves and the plant is indigenous to Paraguay and other South American countries.

In what sense, then, might stevioside be called artificial? After all, sugar is a plant extract. There is no such thing as a sugar bush. The cane, or the beet, has to be processed.

I was also puzzled by references to a list of safe foods, apparently kept by the World Health Organisation, or some similar body. I can see a useful purpose in keeping a list of dangerous foods, but no one suggested that stevioside was on such a list.

It seems that on the appearance of a new vegetable the Government’s view is now that it should be regarded as guilty until proven innocent.

This might be an acceptable approach in some places, but hardly seems to fit Hong Kong, where numerous mysterious animals, vegetables and minerals are poured down the throats of unresisting consumers under the guise of traditional Chinese medicine.

We cannot, surely, have one rule for Chinese medicine and another for Japanese pot noodles. One also wonders whether a similar approach has been adopted to things such as genetically modified tomatoes.

My suspicions were not allayed by one official source’s suggestion that stevioside was ‘linked to cancer’. For many years the appearance of any artificial sweetener was automatically followed by an announcement from some laboratory that the new substance had been ‘associated with cancer’.

This would turn out to be the result of a series of experiments in which laboratory rats were immersed in the substance until they got cancer in self-defence. These experiments were often funded by the sugar industry.

Here we go again, I thought. Too much sugar can give you all sorts of problems but if people want to take their chances with cancer they should be given the choice.

At this point I resorted to the Internet, which, on this topic at least, offers an abundance of information. The story of stevia goes roughly like this. In Paraguay the Indians have been using it since the year dot but an Italian ‘discovered’ it in 1908. It is now in common use in many countries.

In Japan, artificial sweeteners of the conventional chemical kind were banned in the 1960s and since then stevioside has become the standard food-sweetening ingredient. The American history is more complicated. Stevioside was imported for years under the category of ‘generally recognised as safe’, meaning it had been in use since before 1958.

In the late 1980s the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began to harass importers and sellers. Eventually, stevioside was banned in 1991.

But in 1995 the US Congress passed a law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act under which it became legal to import and sell stevioside as long as it was called a dietary supplement. The FDA, however, threatens to confiscate any batch which is described as a sweetener. Why has Hong Kong now joined this stupid game? Search me. Perhaps the relevant officials have not discovered the Internet yet.

[Tim Hamlett is an associate professor of journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University.]


28. ‘Not Enough Done’ to Block Stevia Sales
By Jimmy Cheung

HONG KONG, Mar. 28, South China Morning Post -- Food safety officials yesterday admitted they had not been vigilant enough in preventing products containing a sweetener suspected of causing cancer from being sold in Hong Kong.

Responding to the confusion arising from the use of stevioside in imported food products, Secretary for Food and Environment Lily Yam Kwan Pui-ying conceded more should be done. ‘There is still room for improvement as far as the sensitivity and flexibility of our food surveillance system is concerned,’ she said.

She also admitted information on unhealthy food ingredients was insufficient and pledged to step up education.

Officials hastily pulled dozens of popular Japanese food products from the shelves last week after being alerted by Singapore authorities that the imports contained an artificial sweetener linked to cancer and infertility.

However, some traders have refused to recall their products, saying the sweetener, which is banned in the SAR, is fit for consumption.

Mrs Yam, speaking at a Legco budget briefing, pledged to improve surveillance and vowed that her colleagues would pay more attention to food imported from countries with different safety standards from Hong Kong.

But she stressed traders had obligations to abide by food legislation.

She said officials would conduct studies on artificial sweeteners, bacteria levels in salads and soya sauce, caffeine in drinks and dioxins and heavy metals in foods.

Meanwhile, lawmakers were told on top of the annual $40 million spent monitoring bird flu in poultry, taxpayers had paid more than $200 million in compensation for culls as a result of three outbreaks since 1997.


29. Stevioside Row Seen as Latest Battle in Trade Wars with U.S.
By Clara Li

HONG KONG, Mar. 26, South China Morning Post -- Is artificial sweetener stevioside safe? The question has been the focus of consumer uproar in Hong Kong. On the mainland, however, it is being seen as a nationalist issue rather than a health concern.

Some mainlanders argue that the dispute over stevioside masks what is essentially another trade war between China and the United States.

They see it as the latest of a series of trade disputes between the two countries over exports that range from steel to car windshields.

China exports stevioside to more than 20 countries, including Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian nations. China has captured more than 80 per cent of the world market in stevioside, a higher percentage than any other of its agricultural exports.

Stevioside is a natural sweetener extracted from stevia leaves and is widely believed to be 100 to 300 times sweeter than sugar but contains no calories.

The actual volume of stevioside exports is less important than the fact that it is one of few mainland products that dominate the world market. China is the largest grower of stevia. If the ban on stevioside is expanded, Chinese farmers are sure to suffer.

The controversy over the sweetener followed a report by Singapore’s Straits Times last Monday, which cited US research as saying it could reduce fertility in men and cause cancer.

So far, 18 food products containing the sweetener have been taken off shelves in supermarkets and food stores in Hong Kong, which follows the US food safety standard.

The ban could be expanded to more than 100 products in Hong Kong that contain the sweetener and to about 1,000 Japanese and Korean restaurants that commonly use stevioside to flavour food and sauces.

On Friday, the largest producer of stevioside in Shenzhen, Stevia Food, held a press conference, where it invited an expert to speak about the food additive.

Dr Zheng Jianxian, from South China Science and Technology University in Guangzhou, specialises in stevioside research and claimed that, according to his, and global, research on the substance over the past 20 years, stevioside was safe as long as it was consumed in normal amounts.

He said there was a divergence of opinion in medical research in the West, but ‘it is no more than the differences [over] Chinese traditional medicine’.

Dr Zheng also pointed out that the results of experiments conducted on animals, usually using amounts of stevioside much greater than one would normally consume, could not be directly applied to people. If one used the same analogy, salt could be dangerous too, he said.

The conspiracy theory sounds more convincing when one considers that stevioside’s main rival, US-made chemical sweetener aspartame, has been battling to make inroads into Asian markets.

In the mainland, aspartame now sells at 280 yuan (about HK$262.41) per kilogram, about 100 yuan cheaper than in the US and Europe, industry experts say. Yet, its market has been dwindling in China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Manufacturers of stevioside, especially those from Japan who prefer its low cost, use it in many food products, including sweets, ice-cream, pickles and soft drinks. By 1988, refined stevia extract was outselling US-made NutraSweet, of which aspartame is the chief ingredient.

Despite receiving the green light from the US Food and Drug Administration, aspartame is no stranger to controversy. Many researchers and consumers have long claimed that aspartame, used widely in diet soft drinks, can cause brain tumours if used over a lifetime.

Alleged victims and health activists have been outspoken about aspartame’s harmful long-term effects and have been lobbying to have it banned as a food additive.

China Daily published an article on Saturday quoting officials from the food additive industry as saying stevioside was safe and that the bans were a consequence of ‘media hype’.

According to local media, all products containing stevioside are selling well in the mainland, despite the ban in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Stevioside producers and food companies on the mainland said they were waiting for the Ministry of Health to take further action.

The dispute over stevioside comes at a time when China is protesting against the US decision to charge a 30 per cent tariff on imports of steel from the mainland.

Also, last week the US International Trade Commission announced it would impose tariffs of 3 per cent to 124 per cent on imports of windshields after charges of dumping by Chinese manufacturers.

Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis News journalist Ke Bin recently wrote that the dispute over stevioside was a fight between different economic interests.

‘They are using science as a pretext for a trade war in the food additive industry,’ he said.


30. Stevia: Innocent Herbal Sweetener Caught in Bureaucratic Panic
By Margaret Cheng

HONG KONG, Mar. 25, South China Morning Post -- The shock revelation that foods we had been eating for years had traces of a herbal sweetener the American authorities don’t like sent our food police to drag unsuspecting cup noodles and chip packets off the shelves.

If you think I sound a little unimpressed with our brave food controllers, you’re right. And it’s not for being unaware the stuff is in our food but for their overreaction. If there is one thing world class about those who run Hong Kong it is their ability to overreact.

We were told the sweetener stevioside ‘causes cancer’ and that it has not passed World Health Organisation (WHO) toxicology tests. Well, no it hasn’t: the WHO does not do toxicology tests. It simply recommends what tests others should do.

In all my research -- which included a search of all WHO publications, medical reports on stevioside toxicology and the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) reports on stevioside -- I could not find any references to its ability to cause cancer.

Yet Gloria Tam Lai-fan, assistant director of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said last week stevioside failed to pass toxicology tests including ‘the one adopted by the World Health Organisation’.

The FDA, which banned it as a food additive on the grounds it is ‘not generally approved’ but permitted its use as a dietary supplement, banned it simply because there was not enough research supporting its approval.

These days to get something passed by the FDA is an expensive process. You have to do studies on the chemistry of the thing, feed it in large quantities to large numbers of laboratory animals and test it on willing human volunteers in many situations before they will even consider your work adequate. Even the biggest drug companies find this burden too great. Many promising compounds are shelved because the cost of meeting the toxicology requirements outweighs the profits they are likely to make.

This is what FDA says about stevioside, or stevia: ‘Available toxicological information on stevia is inadequate to demonstrate its safety as a food additive or to affirm its status as GRAS [generally approved status]. However, with regard to its use in dietary supplements, dietary ingredients, including stevia, are not subject to food additive regulations.’

The FDA gives some other interesting information about stevioside which makes the panic in Hong Kong seem even more ridiculous. ‘Stevia leaves are a native product in Brazil and Paraguay. The extract, stevioside, has reportedly been approved for use in foods in Brazil and Japan. The product is used in these countries as a table-top sweetener in virtually all food commodities and as a flavour enhancer in such products as teas. Stevioside is reportedly 250-300 times sweeter than sugar and contributes no calories to the diet.’ It is hardly the sort of thing you would write about a cancer-causing menace.

Why do the Americans allow its use as a dietary supplement but not as a food additive? More and more foods, vitamins and medical products are coming into the US as ‘dietary supplements’ because they can bypass the onerous FDA approval process as long as they carefully label themselves as such.

But where does all this leave stevioside? Not causing cancer, if the millions of Japanese who have been eating it in their snack foods and drinks since the 80s are an example worth noting. In fact, isn’t Japan the country boasting the world’s best longevity figures?

And then there are the Chinese, Taiwanese, and yes, the Hong Kongers who have been eating this stuff for a good 20 years. Maybe no one has done any specific research to prove it does not cause cancer, but I have not come across any evidence it is causing any health problems in these countries.

What is going on is that the authorities have been caught not doing enough to provide proper product labelling -- which has been the problem in the past -- and they are taking it out on a fairly innocent product. This issue is all about regulations and bureaucratic panic and has nothing to do with health.


31. Stevia Sweetener Ban to Be Enforced Despite Mainland China View
By Cheung Chi-fai

HONG KONG, Mar. 24, South China Morning Post -- Hong Kong will continue to adhere to the stringent food additive standards of international authorities, a senior official said yesterday, after mainland experts said stevioside, a suspected cancer-causing sweetener, was safe.

Dr Mak Sin-ping, deputy director of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said after meeting representatives of the Stevia Association of Hong Kong, which promotes the sweetener’s use, that the department would not relax its standards.

‘We will continue to follow the authorities on the standard of food additives and will not allow the use of this banned sweetener in Hong Kong,’ she said, adding that the Government reserved the right to prosecute food importers.

The remark came after mainland experts said they had found no cases in which stevioside, which was approved by the Chinese Government as a food additive in 1986, had produced undesirable side effects. It is popular because it is sweeter than sugar and contains no calories, but is banned in the United States and most of Europe.

‘There is no official ruling so far denouncing foods containing stevioside in China. We think stevioside is legal and secure,’ the China Daily quoted Qi Qingzhong, secretary-general of the China Food Additive Association, as saying yesterday.

The newspaper also quoted a member of China’s National Technical Committee on the Standardisation of Food Additives as saying the bans were the consequence of ‘media hype’.

Tam Tak-hing, a spokesman for the Stevia Association of Hong Kong, said members were willing to co-operate with the order to recall products containing the sweetener. But Mr Tam insisted it was safe. ‘There will be a lot of these products from Japan using the sweetener, so the impact is very extensive,’ he said after meeting the officials.

Some 73 products are being recalled after they were found to contain the sweetener. They range from snacks, noodles and soft drinks to sauces and flavourings.

The Health Department has demanded a health food agent recall a slimming product, Miyura Rose.C, containing the sweetener, according to Dr Lam Ping-yan, deputy director of the Health Department. The importer has been asked to submit a report in 14 days to the department to explain why it failed to list the ingredient when the product was registered.

Gloria Tam Lai-fung, assistant director of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said the recall list could grow as inspections continued.

‘We cannot rule out more [food] products being found with the sweetener as we now move on to inspect the small retailers who have more brands but less stock,’ she said yesterday.

The department said consumer who had purchased products containing stevioside could return them to retailers.


32. Importers Flood Labs Seeking Tests for Banned Stevia Sweetener
By Cheung Chi-fai and Klaudia Lee

HONG KONG, Mar. 23, South China Morning Post -- Inquiries from anxious food importers have flooded into private Hong Kong laboratories and testing centres over the past few days following the scare over the use of the sweetener stevioside.

But the testing services will not be available until next week as local laboratories are still clarifying the test standard to use.

One leading SAR laboratory chief said it had received at least 10 calls from the food industry seeking testing for the ingredient, which is banned in Hong Kong.

‘We got at least 10 inquiries on testing food products ranging from dried fruits to flavourings and sauces. These products include both well-known brands and lesser-known brands from Japan and the mainland,’ he said.

He said his lab was arranging equipment and importing appropriate chemicals for the test and expected to be ready to provide the service as early as next week. But he said there could be an indefinite number of food products containing stevioside and it would be impossible for the Government to test them all.

Dominic Lam Chun-hong, Chinese Manufacturers Association Testing and Certification Laboratory deputy director, said some food importers had contacted the laboratory over the test. But he said it had to secure a standard sample of the sweetener before it could offer testing services.

Leading laboratory SGS Hong Kong Limited also said it had received a number of inquiries and was still checking with its overseas branch about the testing standard for the banned sweetener.

The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department announced this week the recall of 73 products containing or suspected to contain stevioside after reports from Singapore about its use in popular snack foods.

On Thursday, the department director, Rita Lau Ng Wai-lan, said it only had 182 inspectors and it was impossible for them to check all the millions of food products selling in Hong Kong.

China-backed department stores became the target of inspection yesterday after a number of Japanese stores were found to have sold food products containing stevioside.

A South China Morning Post reporter yesterday spotted a Food and Environmental Hygiene Department inspector carrying out checks on various food products at Chinese Goods Centre Ltd -- a Chinese department store - in North Point. The inspector checked snacks and drinks made on the mainland, such as Chinese weight-losing tea and black jelly. The manager said: ‘We did sell these products before, but it’s now no longer the case.’

The banned sweetener is regarded as safe for use in food products in about 20 countries, including Japan and the mainland.

A newspaper yesterday said one of its reporters had found 20 kinds of Japanese snacks, sauces and flavourings containing the sweetener sold in two major supermarkets specialising in Japanese food in Causeway Bay.

A spokesman for supermarket chain Citysuper said yesterday it had already removed all products that contain stevioside, such as Japanese snacks and soy sauce, from its shelves.


33. Hong Kong Stevia Scare Hits 55 More Food Products
By Klaudia Lee

HONG KONG, Mar. 23, South China Morning Post -- A further 55 food products were withdrawn from sale yesterday as the scare over the suspected cancer-causing additive stevioside escalated.

It brings to 73 the number of products withdrawn because they contain or are suspected to contain the banned sweetener.

Officials moved to close loopholes in food safety checks highlighted by the scare.

Manufacturers will be required to list exact ingredients on their products’ labels under government proposals.

Stevioside is banned in Hong Kong, the US and most of Europe, but is legal and widely used in Japan and the mainland.

The latest recall mainly involves Japanese snacks. Among the products are three flavours of the popular Otoufu jellies and Yamayoshi potato chips.

Under the labelling proposals, complex chemical ingredients such as stevioside would be listed as numbers according to an internationally recognised code. Currently, chemical additives can simply be listed under general terms such as ‘artificial sweetener’.

Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene Rita Lau Ng Wai-lan said on an RTHK radio programme yesterday that officials were drafting a law on the requirement.

‘We have already made a policy decision that the contents of food additives have to be stated clearly . . . however, as there is so much information, it’s very difficult to read if all are written down,’ Ms Lau said.

‘Besides, for those small-sized products, there is simply not enough space. Therefore we [will] require them to print the international codes on their products.’

She said a booklet explaining the codes would be printed for customers’ reference under the new arrangement.

The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department announced this week the recall of 18 food products containing stevioside after reports from Singapore about its use in popular snack foods.

A consultation paper on the proposed legislation was issued in 2000. However, a Food and Environmental Hygiene Department spokeswoman said no timetable had been set and the current scare had increased interest in the proposals.

‘We need more time to do some analysis and other work on this subject. Before the [stevioside] incident, very few people were interested in this legislation,’ the spokeswoman said.

James Tadashi Osugi, chairman of the Hong Kong Stevia Association, said it would meet the department today to discuss the recall before deciding further action.

The association says the sweetener is safe for consumption.


34. Random Checks on Snacks After Stevioside Scare
By Ella Lee

HONG KONG, Mar. 22, South China Morning Post -- Food safety officials will begin conducting random checks on snack foods for the banned sweetener stevioside after the surveillance loophole was revealed by the scare over the suspected cancer-causing ingredient.

The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said last night it had never tested imported food for the chemical -- despite it being common in types of Japanese and mainland snacks popular here.

The new testing regime, involving random tests on popular snacks taken from shops, will start next month. Other banned sweeteners will also be tested for.

Eighteen products containing stevioside have been recalled since Tuesday, after a report from Singapore revealed its use.

The department conducted 950 tests on artificial sweeteners in food last year. However, it only tested for the substances listed on contents labels, and not for banned substances.

The department’s director, Rita Lau Ng Wai-lan, yesterday agreed the department should be ‘more sensitive’ to the detection of substances allowed overseas but banned in Hong Kong.

However, she denied that her department had failed as a safety watchdog. ‘Setting priorities is a must. Instant noodles, for example, could contain 600 substances, are we going to test for all of them?’ Ms Lau said.

The SAR, following the standards of world food safety authority Codex, only allows 10 types of artificial sweetener. More than 400 others are used elsewhere.


35. Closing the Loopholes for Stevioside
HONG KONG, Mar. 22, South China Morning Post -- The row over the use of the artificial sweetener stevioside in some popular, mainly Japanese, snacks has exposed a major flaw in the food surveillance programme of Hong Kong and also, for that matter, Singapore.

Snacks containing the sweetener have been sold in both places for years, but this did not come to light until a company which deals in it wrote to the Straits Times asking for permission from the Environment Ministry to sell its products in the Lion City. That alerted the ministry, and then the Hong Kong health authorities, to take action to recall the snacks. Until then, routine testing of food samples in both places had apparently failed to test for stevioside because it was not declared in the labels.

SAR health officials tried to put on a brave face yesterday, arguing that it was impossible to check for the presence of all kinds of additives and that they did try to test the levels of about 10 commonly used sweeteners.

Admittedly, exhaustive tests to find out each and every ingredient contained in any sample are both unnecessary and wasteful. But as Japanese snacks are hugely popular here, a pro-active health authority should have tried to compare the food safety guidelines of Japan and Hong Kong to identify gaps that may highlight areas of concern. Had that been done, stevioside would have certainly been exposed as an issue and Japanese manufacturers told not to export snacks containing it to Hong Kong. Now that such snacks have indeed been imported, those responsible should be dealt with according to the law.

Some manufacturers of such snacks argue that stevioside is safe for consumption and is not banned on the mainland, Korea or Japan. But it is up to them to change the minds of the World Health Organisation, which considers it unsafe and whose rules Hong Kong follows.

To make the job of detecting banned additives easier, labelling laws will need to be tightened to require manufacturers to list the names and amounts of additives used.

The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department will now set up a special unit to test for sweeteners. That is a welcome remedy. But no amount of resources will be adequate to plug all loopholes unless the department changes the objectives of its tests from looking for what is reportedly there to what should not be there.


36. U.S. DEA Rule on Hemp Food Criticised by Congress Members
EVERSHAM, Worcester, U.K., Mar. 8, just-food.com -- In a letter sent to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) today [Friday], 22 members of Congress said that their new interpretive rule that bans edible hemp seed or oil items that contain "any THC" is "overly restrictive".

The letter also urged the DEA to "establish realistic standards which take into account current testing technologies and better define trace levels of THC [the hallucinogenic ingredient in marijuana] which are permissible for human use".

Dozens of manufacturers in the US$5m hemp food industry filed suit last fall to challenge the DEA’s interpretive rule issued on 9 October 2001. The Controlled Substances Act (see 21 USC §802(16)) exempts hemp seed and oil for human consumption, just like the poppy seed (which contains trace opiates and is commonly consumed on bagels).

As a result of public and court pressure (the DEA received over 115,000 comments in support of hemp products), the DEA extended the "grace period" for disposal of THC containing hemp food products through 18 March 2002. Many companies that ship hemp seed and oil to the US market do not detect any THC in their products, however, and intend along with major US manufacturers and natural market retail chains to continue to sell hemp foods after 18 March.

Earlier this week, the court decided not to rule on whether to Stay the DEA’s rule pending ultimate resolution of the case, but rather to expedite the entire case in response to hemp companies filing a motion to stay the DEA rule. Attorneys representing hemp companies will appear before the court on 8 April 2002 in San Francisco to make oral arguments.

"Members of Congress from every state have heard from upset constituents telling them that the DEA has misinterpreted the law that exempts highly nutritious hemp seed and oil from DEA’s control," says Eric Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, a grassroots organization dedicated to the re-commercialization of industrial hemp.

"Today’s letter is evidence that members of congress are responding positively to our grassroots efforts."

Signers of the letter assert, "The Department of Justice shares our position that legitimate hemp food products are safe and legal under current law". They cite a letter sent to the DEA Administrator dated 23 March 2000, from the Chief of the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section of the US Department of Justice, which concluded that the Controlled Substances Act is clear in allowing for the importation of hemp products.

The letter was signed by Representatives George Miller (D-CA), Ron Paul(R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI), Connie Morella (R-MD), Martin Sabo (D-MN), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Nick Rahall (D-WV), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Pete Stark (D-CA), Robert Andrews (D-NJ), Sam Farr (D-CA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Barney Frank (D-MA), Mike Thompson (D-CA), Lynn Rivers (D-MI), William Clay (D-MO) and Jim McDermott(D-WA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) sent his own letter to DEA opposing the rule.


37. U.S. ‘Whitelist’ May Ban Interstate Movement of Plants, Herbs
By David Theodoropoulos

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Mar. 17, No Whitelist Coalition -- An important deadline is approaching: the public comment period for the USDA Draft Action Plan for the Noxious Weeds Program is March 29th. This plan includes the white list (clean list) proposal, plus serious new restrictions on interstate movement of all plant materials -- even clean dry medicinal and culinary herbs. Interstate movement will require federal permit and certificate of inspection -- this will SHUT DOWN seed exchanges such as the Seed Saver’s Exchange and others. This is very serious stuff.

In spite of the fact that the USDA received 8 to 1 negative comments on the white list, they are ignoring the clear will of the American people and going ahead with it. They just won’t take "no" for an answer. It is this kind of arrogant authoritarianism on the part of bureaucracy that creates ill-will in the public at a time when we should all be pulling together to find solutions to the important environmental problems facing us all.

The USDA is a huge agency, and does lots of good in many areas -- it is terrible to have one out-of-control regulatory branch discredit the whole agency. We need to contact our representatives and send the USDA our comments opposing this.

It is important to send 4 hard copies to: Docket No. 01-034-1, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS Suite 3C03, 4700 River Road, Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238.

[David Theodoropoulos is moderator and science advisor to the No Whitelist Coalition.]


38. U.S. Initiative to Ban Herbal Animal Supplements Feared
Mar. 31 -- According to a well-known herbal veterinarian a new initiative to control the sale of animal supplements in the United States is about to be launched by enforcement officials. In a letter appealing for help to lobby officials and legislators, Dr. Susan Wynn wrote that "a supplement labeled specifically for animals containing ingredients... -- whether it is on pet or health food stores -- will have to be pulled." According to Wynn, "this affects everything from herbs and nutraceuticals to some health and prescription diets."

The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), working with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has released a draft enforcement strategy for unapproved ingredients in animal feeds and pet foods. A final decision will be made in April. After that animal supplements will begin to disappear, starting with glucosamine, according to Wynn.

One of the stated goals of the new enforcement strategy is "minimized availability of unapproved feed ingredients." The draft calls for a "uniform enforcement event," coordinated by the AAFCO and the FDA, "to target unsafe, unapproved ingredients that are distributed in all channels of commerce, including catalogs and the Internet."

Dr. Wynn, executive director of the Veterinary Botanical Medicine Association, and secretary-treasurer of the American Academy of Veterinary Nutrition, called for the launch of a letter writing campaign "the likes of which we have never had before." She believes that it will take an act of congress to stop the regulators from banning herbal supplements, much like the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA) was passed in 1994 to place limits on the FDA to ban herbs after thousands of letters demanding the freedom to buy supplements were sent to legislators. "We will need tens of thousands of letters for our animals." Wynn urged pet owners, feed lot farmers, groomers, and veterinarians to write or sign petitions. "This will be a political fight, and we need legislators on our side."

In an email message to the HerbLetter, Dr. Wynn said that the letter writing campaign already has had an effect. "The initial volley has apparently alerted AAFCO that people are concerned," she wrote. According to her, the AAFCO is drafting a response that will be posted on their website "very soon." Dr. Wynn added that she is "anxious to have them draw a line in the sand over supplements."

Dr. Wynn indicated to the HerbLetter that she herself has misgivings about indiscriminate use of additives in animal feeds, including herbal and nutritional additives. But she does not want to see the pendulum swing to extreme of making herbal additives and standalone supplements illegal. She warned that some state regulators "have already made moves to remove feeds containing herbal supplements." Regulators forced New Mexico company Bow Wow to remove from sale their animal treats containing Chinese herbs, she said.

[AAFCO draft: http://www.aafco.org/ESMI_Draft_Enforcement_Strategy.pdf]


39. Appeals Court Blocks DEA Rule That Bans Foods Made With Hemp
SAN FRANCISCO, Mar. 8 -- A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked a Drug Enforcement Administration rule that bans food made with hemp, a plant related to marijuana.

The agency declared in October that food products containing even trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC -- the psychoactive chemical found in marijuana and sometimes in hemp -- were banned under the Controlled Substances Act.

The DEA halted production and distribution of all goods containing THC and intended for human consumption. The products were to be destroyed or removed from the United States by March 18.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said late Thursday the government could not enforce the rule until the court decides on challenges to it. The appeals court is set to hear arguments on the case April 8.

Hemp is used in many food products including energy bars, waffles, tortilla chips, milk-free cheese, veggie burgers, salad oil and bread. Hemp fibers are used in paper, clothing and other products, and hemp oil is found in body-care products such as soap and cosmetics.


40. Native Elders, Herbal Industry Discuss Threats to Medicinal Plants
By Bill Bergstrom

PHILADELPHIA, Mar. 17, AP -- Herbal shampoo and medicine makers could learn something from American Indians about harvesting medicinal and aromatic plants without endangering some vanishing and valuable species.

American Indians gathering plants for herbal remedies take only those they need, and utter songs and chants lamenting the sacrifice and affirming that the plants are being harvested to relieve suffering, said Tis Mal Crow of Speedwell, Tenn., a Western Band Cherokee healer.

"From any one area we limit the amount taken. They are taken only at certain times of year," Crow said. That’s in contrast with some commercial harvesters who, he said, "go in there with bulldozers and clear off whole hillsides."

Crow is one of 10 members of a Native American Elder Circle who take part in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Medicinal Plant Working Group discussing ways to protect threatened plants. The group also includes representatives from industry, government, academia and environmental organizations.

"Plants that our grandfathers’ grandfathers respected and protected for future generations are no longer available to us," said Crow, author of "Native Plants, Native Healing." He spoke recently at a symposium the working group helped organize on Industrial Leadership for the Preservation of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants.

North American environments from alpine tundra to prairie grasslands, coastal salt marshes and tropical rain forests have some 20,000 plant species, the working group reported in December 2000. At least 175 species are marketed for use in over-the-counter remedies and supplements in the $3 billion U.S. medicinal herb market.

Many plants are collected from the wild in large quantities. For example, about 65 million goldenseal plants and 34 million ginseng plants a year have been harvested from eastern U.S. forests in recent years, according to the report.

The two-day symposium included pharmaceutical, cosmetic, vitamin and herbal product makers, academics, farmers and government representatives.

"We are interested in creating partnerships with as diverse a group as possible and bringing together as many interest groups as possible," said Julie Lyke, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

Some plants are plentiful enough to harvest without concern, said Michael McGuffin, president of the American Herbal Products Association, a Silver Spring, Md., trade group.

"Saw palmetto is harvested in the wild but it’s estimated that there are 4 million acres of it," McGuffin said. "Black cohosh is one we are concerned about. The root is the part used. End of plant."

One presentation involved some successful efforts to cultivate black cohosh, an eight-foot perennial with stems and roots used to treat menstrual and digestive problems and rheumatism.

But plants such as goldenseal root, often used in combination with vitamin C; American ginseng, marketed as an energizer and immune stimulant; and echinacea, also sold as an immune stimulant, are considered at risk of extinction, Crow and McGuffin said.

Herbal product manufacturers’ demand for plants can end up preserving natural habitats, such as rain forests, said Dominique N. Conseil, president of Aveda, a maker of plant-based shampoos, cleansers and cosmetics.

Conseil said that can be the result if companies show local people how to harvest herbal products that are more profitable than logging or clearing the land for other uses.

"Communities need to have a source of revenue. It’s about developing a source of revenue that preserves the wild," Conseil said. "If they can make a living from the environment without destroying it, when that works, it’s ideal"

For some plants, the effort comes too late. Of 200 species discovered by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their expedition of 1803 through 1806, it isn’t known if 30 percent still exist, said Ara DerMarderosian, a professor of pharmacognosy, the study of drugs from natural sources, at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

One of the working group’s goals is to catalog American plants, DerMarderosian noted. "We hope they are still there. There’s a lot of places you’ll go and find a parking lot."


41. The Global Trend Towards Herbal Medicine at Odds with Kenyan Trend
By Dorothy Otieno

NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar. 30, The East African Standard -- There is currently a trend, even in America and European countries, to incorporate herbal medicine in public health systems and academic inquiry. But in Kenya, a proposal to start dispensing herbal medicine alongside conventional drugs in public hospitals has been opposed by doctors.

An announcement by Public Health Minister, Prof Sam Ongeri, earlier this year, that he would introduce a Bill in Parliament seeking to legalise traditional medicine in Kenyan public hospital, sparked off a heated debate. The stiffest opposition came from Kenya Medical Association chairman, Dr James Nyikal, who said making herbs available at health institutions would be disastrous to the provision of health care. According to Prof Ongeri, the stand taken by opponents of the legalisation of herbal medicine such as Dr Nyikal negates the fact that traditional medicine has been known to work for centuries, sometimes even better than conventional medicine. Dr Jennifer Orwa, a senior research officer with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), believes that the scepticism about herbal medicine can be traced back to Kenya’s colonial past.

"Because the society has been brainwashed to believe that using herbal medicine is indulging in witchcraft, many people are reluctant about using them in their current form," she says.

She adds: "People are turning to natural products even in the West." Last month, Prof Julius Mwangi of the faculty of pharmacy at the University of Nairobi, told a workshop that more than 40 medical schools in the United States have incorporated courses on herbal medicine in their programmes. They include the top-rated Harvard and John Hopkins.

In Africa, Ghana has enacted a Traditional Medicine Act and in South Africa various mainstream hospitals allow traditional healers to practise alongside doctors.

Researchers now agree that herbal medicine has in the past succeeded where conventional medicine has failed. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is currently supporting initiative by governments to promote herbal medicine.


42. Kenyan University Gets Herbalists for Drugs Research Centre
By Kihumba Kamotho and Samuel Otieno

NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar. 30, The East African Standard -- Kenyatta university has engaged herbalists to be offering health services and participate in research with its scientists and campus doctors.

Kenyatta University authorities say the herbalists have already proved that herbal medicine is effective in managing some cases of prostate cancer, diabetes mellitus and hypertension.

The herbalists, scientists and university doctors are working at the Centre for Complementary Medicine and Bio-technology (CCMB).

The centre was started in August 2000 as a multi-disciplinary centre for excellence in health research, capacity building, bio-diversity conservation, drug discovery and research-based product development.

Prof Orago says the centre will work in partnership with traditional medicine practitioners in the identification of potential natural resources of medicines which are under utilised.

"We had to work together with various people who had certain skills that have been under utilised and we identified traditional medical practitioners in which we have six at the moment," says Prof Orago.

The move comes at a time when poverty, HIV/Aids epidemic and drug resistant strains have caused the return of diseases such as tuberculosis which had been eradicated.

The Government has prepared a Bill which if passed by Parliament will allow use of herbal medicine in public hospitals. Although the Kenya Medical Association has opposed campaigns to promote herbal medicine, some scientists and researchers say herbal medicine is affordable and has proved very effective in many cases.

The KU centre is headed by Prof Alloys Orago, a professor of clinical immunology. The university is the only one in the country that has invited herbalists in heath provision and medical research. The university doctors and researchers take for laboratory analysis any medicine prescribed by the herbalists to determine the level of toxicity and the correct dosage.

So far, Prof Orago says, the herbalists have successfully treated opportunistic diseases that attack HIV/Aids patients. " This is a very strong base for fighting the HIV/Aids scourge, " says Prof Orago. He says a large number of patients are choosing to be treated with herbal medicines, saying hospital treatment had failed to cure them.

Orago says they are currently working on "very affordable drugs to treat malaria, sickle cell anaemia and cancer of cervix and oesophagus". The centre is also doing tests on impotency and infertility drugs.

"There will certainly be a lot of research going on. We are determined in exploring affordable ways of treating diseases in the light of escalating poverty," says Prof Orago. About 56 percent of Kenyans live below poverty line and cannot access many of the drugs prescribed by doctors. In the entire sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that most people live on less that a dollar a day.

The university is also helping in quality and sterile methods of drug production and packaging.

The move to allow herbalists work with researchers and doctors in public hospitals has been supported by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Nairobi-based WHO Africa regional director, Dr Ebrahim Samba, says African doctors should not dismiss herbal medicine because 80 percent of conventional drugs are derived from herbs and animal products.

WHO is also testing the efficacy and toxicity of two herbals drugs that have proved effective in treating opportunistic infections associated with HIV/Aids, he said. In Africa, Ghana is among countries that have already enacted a traditional medicine act.

A University of Nairobi professor of pharmacy, Julius Mwangi, says there is a lot of interest in herbal medicine in many countries and institutions. He adds that Harvard and John Hopkins are among the 40 medical schools in the United States that have started courses on alternative medicine.

He says that in Germany and France, doctors and pharmacists receive training in herbal medicine. Most of the herbalists are ready to work with the university rather the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri).

They claim that Kemri attributes their research to the government researchers while it is them who do everything.


43. Africa Unlocks Herbal Secrets to Fight AIDS
By Matthew Green

NYERI, Kenya, Mar. 25, Reuters -- Jack Githae believes Africa could defeat its catastrophic AIDS epidemic if only it would embrace the healing powers of herbs.

Stalking into the bush with a knife and briefcase in search of asparagus, the Kenyan healer symbolises a growing belief among African herbalists that ancient wisdom could turn the tide of a modern disease.

"To me this is a natural pharmacy," said Githae, 56, gesturing at a woodland clearing on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

"We have seen such miraculous cures from this natural pharmacy in the last 30 years that I don’t tell anybody ‘you are going to die’," he said.

Traditional healers across the continent say their remedies offer huge potential to fight diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia that prey on HIV patients, but accuse governments and doctors of spurning their offers of help.

"How can we ignore such knowledge when people are dying like flies?," said the grey-bearded Githae, who cuts a slightly incongruous figure wearing a white lab coat in the woods.

Battling what they say is a wall of scepticism and prejudice in much of the medical establishment, herbalists are hoping to win more government support to distribute their remedies.

Africa has 28.1 million of the world’s 40 million people living with HIV-AIDS. Healers say even the most sceptical of Western-trained doctors need all the help they can get.

"Shores of Death"

Herbalists argue that their pills and potions are cheap, available in remote areas, and above all, that they work.

"We went with those people who the white doctors had abandoned and told to go home and die," said Credo Mutwa, an 80-year-old South African healer and visionary.

"We brought them back from the shores of death," he said, adding that he uses the Sutherlandia Frutescens plant to combat AIDS-related wasting.

For centuries, African healers have used plants to treat illnesses like diarrhoea and lung infections that attack immune systems shattered by HIV. It is these diseases, rather than the virus itself, that can kill AIDS patients.

Such herbs are affordable. Githae charges 250 shillings ($3.20) a week for a concoction for HIV patients that he says boosts their immunity levels. Pharmacies charge at least 1,500 shillings for an equivalent doses of anti-retroviral drugs.

While doctors say they want more evidence that traditional remedies work, many patients swear by them.

"I was suspicious of herbal medicine. I thought of it as witchcraft," said one 26-year-old HIV-positive Kenyan woman, who uses a Neem tree soap to treat herpes. "Now everyone asks me what I use on my skin because I don’t have ugly wounds any more," she said, waiting at a herbal clinic in a Nairobi slum.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says 80 percent of people rely on herbs in countries from South Africa to Ethiopia. In Ghana, there is about one traditional practitioner for every 400 people, compared to one doctor per 12,000 people.

Doctors worry that the tonic soups and ground root powders dished out by the herbalists may expose patients to exploitation by quacks, or worse, trigger dangerous side effects.

Herbalists counter that they could have a greater positive impact if more governments would allow them to use their medicines in hospitals and provide registration procedures to weed out charlatans.

Prejudice on both sides of the divide between healers and their drug-dispensing counterparts has hindered cooperation.

Colonial Outlaws

Herbalists say much of the scepticism dates back to colonial days, when imperial governments ruling countries as diverse as Namibia and Burkina Faso outlawed traditional medicine, branding it as "primitive" and against the grain of progress.

"They look at us with mistrust, we look at them with a superiority complex," said Serge Eholie, deputy clinic head at the infectious and tropical disease unit of the Treichville hospital in Ivory Coast, west Africa.

"But no African doctor can dismiss traditional healers or pretend they are not there. We need to train them and work with them so they can help us treat people," Eholie said.

Repeating a gripe common among health officials across the continent, Eholie said the main problem was that herbal lore passed on by grandmothers was seldom researched and documented.

Plant treatments suffered an extra setback in Ivory Coast, which has one of west Africa’s highest HIV prevalence rates, standing at 10 to 12 percent.

A herbal drug named Therastim was billed as a wonder cure for AIDS in January last year. Hope evaporated when Treichville researchers said they had found no evidence that it worked.

Mixed Response

Governments have given herbalists a mixed reception.

Tiny Benin allocated $14,000 to developing traditional medicine in its 1998-1999 budget, but Ugandan herbalists say the government has only recently realised their potential.

"There is no council, no legislation and no policy on traditional healers. We are working in the dark," said Dorothy Balaba, director of Traditional and Modern Health Practitioners Together Against AIDS And Other Diseases.

Kenya said this year that a task force had been set up to prepare a bill to integrate herbal medicine into the formal healthcare system, but the Kenya Medical Association warned that bringing herbalists into hospitals could cause chaos.

Fears in Kenya are echoed across Africa by doctors who say the ideas of the ancients must be vetted by modern laboratories.

"We must legalise something on the basis of evidence," said Andrew Kitua, Director General of Tanzania’s National Institute for Medical Research. "Science has to lead us."

(Additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi in Abidjan, Paul Busharizi in Uganda, Wangui Kanina in Dar es Salaam, Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa, and Betty Njoroge and Helen Nyambura in Nairobi)


44. Chinese, Vietnamese Scientists Discuss Updating Traditional Medicine
HANOI, Mar. 30, Xinhua -- Hundreds of Chinese and Vietnamese scientists, experts and businessmen in traditional medicine have gathered at a conference in Ho Chi Minh City to discuss ways of modernizing traditional medicine.

The conference, organized by the Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Health, China’s State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the Hong Kong International Traditional Medicine Research Association, aims to introduce the results and experiences in modernizing traditional medicine for disease diagnosis, treatment, and pharmaceutical production.

The two-day conference will provide an opportunity for traditional medicine experts to exchange experiences and discuss how to bring into play the great potential of traditional medicine.

More than 30 reports presented at the conference dealt with the effective use of traditional medicine in the treatment of hepatitis B, cirrhosis, atheriosclerosis, diabetes, drug addiction, and other diseases.

They also emphasized the need to combine traditional and modern medicines, not only modernizing, the process of diagnosing and treating but also the process of producing traditional medicines and drugs from herbal plants.

The conference will conclude on Sunday.


45. Prince Charles Goes for Gold with a ‘Healing’ Garden at Chelsea
By Sam Greenhill

UNITED KINGDOM, Mar. 1, PA News -- The Prince of Wales is going for gold again at the Chelsea Flower Show, a year after winning a silver award for his Carpet Garden.

Charles has been drawing up designs for The Healing Garden in a bid to clinch the top prize in the annual show.

Using 125 species of trees and shrubs, it will contain no straight lines or sharp angles, and will be based on plants that have either a medicinal or culinary use.

The Prince is designing the Laurent-Perrier Harpers & Queen garden in conjunction with Jinny Blom, a designer who will be working with Crocus, the company in charge of building their garden.

At last year’s Chelsea Flower Show, the Prince won acclaim -- and the silver medal -- for his Arabic-influenced Carpet Garden, which drew on his interests in Islamic culture.

An elaborate arrangement of cypresses, fruit trees and terracotta paths, it was inspired by the geometric patterns on Middle Eastern rugs at Highgrove, Charles’s residence in Gloucestershire.

This time, the theme is healing, though precise details are still being worked out.

Bernard de Nonancourt, chairman of Laurent-Perrier, said: "We are delighted to have been able to work with His Royal Highness on this Healing Garden.

"With around 125 species of tree, shrub and herbaceous plant, each with a healing use, the garden is not only going to be a major visual attraction at Chelsea, it also has an important educational role to play."

The pressure is on for the Prince: for the part three years, Laurent-Perrier gardens have been awarded gold medals at the show, which this year runs from May 21 to 24.

A spokeswoman at St James’s Palace confirmed the Prince’s participation and said he had been approached by Laurent-Perrier and asked to take part.

"They approached him after seeing his garden last year and invited him to design one for this year’s show," she said.

Last year, the Prince found himself under scrutiny over his links with the Spanish tile company that sponsored his Carpet Garden, which was re-planted in the grounds of Highgrove.

He had organised a thank-you dinner at Highgrove for the firm’s clients and sales force and this was attended by his sons and the model Claudia Schiffer, ensuring publicity for the company.

St James’s Palace said this year’s deal with Laurent-Perrier was straightforward.

"They invited him to do a garden and he wanted to do a garden. It is something he enjoys doing. He did not approach them.

"They would have done a garden whether he accepted or not."


46. Seasoning Salt Becomes Recipe for Survival for Texas Businessman
By Barry Shlachte

WEATHERFORD, Texas, Mar. 26, Fort Worth Star-Telegram -- For the Texan after whom Larry Hagman modeled his take-no-prisoners J.R. Ewing character for the 1970s series "Dallas," desperation was the mother of reinvention.

When Hagman knew Jess Hall Jr. in the early 1950s, Hall was riding high in the oil-field supply business, manufacturing and selling devices that his father, Jess Sr., had created during the Depression.

There was a serious rift between father and son, and though Hagman got some of the details wrong in his 2001 autobiography, "Hello Darlin’," the younger Hall was at one point in direct competition with his father in Weatherford, Hagman’s hometown.

Two decades later, Jess Hall Jr. sold his firm, Weatherford Oil Tool Co., gave away two-thirds of his fortune to family and then lost half of what remained in a divorce settlement. To make matters worse, he had signed a noncompete agreement in the only trade from which he knew how to spin money.

Hall had one place to turn -- his kitchen.

Once when he ran out of his favorite seasoning, he turned to a box of spices and condiments his oldest son had left behind. From them, Hall blended his own, called it "Jess Hall’s Serendipity Seasoning Salt" and began handing out shakers of the 18-ingredient mix to friends and clients.

In 1976, Hall says, he had nowhere else to turn and began commercially producing Serendipity in his kitchen.

"I saw I needed to do something," Hall says. Adds his second wife Gayle: "It was just a matter of survival we got into this business."

The first batch was 2 1/2 pounds.

"It disappeared pretty fast," Hall says.

His first customers were Gibson’s grocery store, James Mathison’s Gulf filling station and Malone’s hardware store, all in Weatherford.

"We mostly gave it away the first year," Hall says.

Then the new owners of his company bought cases of the stuff as corporate gifts -- instead of the usual bottles of Scotch and bourbon for drilling contractors.

"It was something people could bring home to their wives, who hadn’t appreciated seeing their husbands return drunk," Hall says.

The company bought more than 4,000 shakers a month. Then other oil industry firms followed suit.

Corporate orders suddenly dried up during the oil crash of the mid-1980s. But that proved a blessing in disguise for the home-based business.

"The companies stopped handing them out, but people were hooked on it," Gayle Hall recalls. "That’s how our mail-order business started."

Today, the $133,000-a-year business has its own little building behind the Halls’ home, where the flagship Serendipity powder is produced (with and without MSG) along with a chili spice mix, a barbecue dry rub and a salt-free seasoning.

The couple still uses the same 25-year-old Sears concrete mixer to combine the ingredients, and every shaker and tub is filled and labeled by hand.

Though sales are modest, they’re growing and no longer dependent on one type of business. The Halls say revenues are equally divided between corporate, mail-order, supermarket and restaurant sales.

All 60 Chicken Express chain stores hand out little Serendipity packets.

"We think it’s an excellent product," says Richard Stuart, who began the fried-chicken chain with one Benbrook store with his wife. "We’ve been buying it for over 20 years. Kids put it on their gravy or mix it into the ketchup and dip their french fries."

The line is now sold by supermarkets in 10 Texas counties, up from six in the past five years, according to the Halls’ sole distributor, Pete Anderson of Dublin, who recently got the seasoning blends into six more Winn-Dixie stores.

So far, Jess Hall’s Seasoned Salt Co. has been able to place products without having to pay chains "slotting fees," a legal but controversial practice that keeps many small manufacturers out of the market, Anderson says.

It hasn’t been all smooth sailing.

Wal-Mart in Weatherford suddenly stopped purchases after a representative from the Bentonville, Ark., headquarters declared the Serendipity display to be somehow nonconforming. Sales are expected to resume when other shelf space is found, Anderson says.

The Weatherford seasoning company might soon be approaching a quandary that many small companies face.

If it picks up more distributors and customers, its hands-on approach to filling orders will be outstripped. But the Halls are wary of contracting out the blending and packaging, although they have agreed to ship bulk seasoning to a company that will produce portion packs for Chicken Express.

Eager to expand the business is Jess’ youngest son, George W. "Dub" Hall, 20, who has been helping out on the marketing end when not attending college.

"We’re in the midst of a lot of change," says Dub Hall, who persuaded Winn-Dixie to offer the seasoning in six more stores.

But how much has Jess Hall Jr. changed from the days when Hagman knew him?

"I understand he was quite the `J.R. Ewing’ in his younger days, a real wildcatter-type person," says Stuart, who bought a home down the road from Hall. "But he’s true gentleman. And anyone who knows him knows he’s true gentleman, a man of his word."


47. Organic Pine Tree Extract to Control Weeds
MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 1, Nutraingredients.com -- A small New Zealand company, Certified Organics, has developed a product from extracts taken from pine trees which it believes is the first organic weed controller.

The so-called organic interceptor controls unwanted growth through dehydration, rather than poisoning the weeds as synthetic chemical weed killers.

Because of this, it leaves no harmful residues, does not affect soil health and does not create problems as a result of spray drift.

Certified Organics has patented the interceptor in New Zealand and has patents pending in North America, Europe, South Africa and Australia.

The company has secured an Australian agent and is forming a joint venture company with Netherlands-based Gainex Vivace International. The joint venture will market and distribute the interceptor in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Certified Organics has contracted the New Zealand research company BioDiscovery to develop the agricultural and industrial potential of the pine extract.

Certified Organics is the only listed company in New Zealand devoted to organic products. The company said it aims to become a leading producer of certified organic products for farming, domestic and industrial use.

It says this approach will enable it to benefit from the growing demand for organic products.

[Source: The New Zealand Herald]


48. Faster, Higher, Stronger: Confessions of an Ephedrine Junkie
By Alexandra Gill

VANCOUVER, Mar. 9, Globe and Mail -- I am lying in bed, bug-eyed and restless at 8 a.m. on aSaturday, desperately craving my thermogenic dietary supplement and a run along English Bay. More sleep would be nice, but my overstimulated metabolism lures me into the kitchen. I wash the capsules down with two of the 10 glasses of water I try to guzzle each day and wonder: how did I, a former weekend warrior who always slept till noon, become a pill-popping fitness junkie?

I cheated.

My ephedrine addiction began with a guy. Instead of making me a coffee, he whipped up a protein shake. "Oreo-cookie flavour," he said, smiling ever so sweetly as he held out a glass of thick muck that looked like mashed cardboard. "Yummy!"

Blah. He didn’t even use milk. I gagged on the first sip and got ready to bolt, then decided to give him a second chance when he took the engineered health food away and eagerly agreed to go out for breakfast for eggs Benedict.

But one little taste was all it took. Blended into that disgusting shake was a seductive Chinese herb called ma huang, also known as ephedra, or by its chemical derivative ephedrine. A botanical source of alkaloids commonly found in nasal decongestants, ephedra jump-starts the central nervous and cardiovascular systems, and causes the lung bronchi to dilate. When stacked with ASA and caffeine, it provides a big boost to your day.

At first, I admonished my friend for taking it. Ephedrine combinations had already been banned by the International Olympic Committee and were under investigation by Health Canada as a possible contributing factor in 60 reports of stroke, heart attacks, heart-rate irregularities, seizures, psychoses and even one death. (Health Canada issued a health advisory and voluntary recall of many ephedrine products in January.)

Over time, I began adapting to the West Coast mentality, where health nuts simply see ephedrine as part of a balanced lifestyle. Like countless Toronto transplants, I began lifting weights and thinking seriously about Omega-3 fats and my carbohydrate intake, while maintaining an appetite for butter chicken and pâté. On weekends, the guy and I would go dining, dancing and drinking, then jog off the hangover the next morning. It wasn’t easy keeping up with this hedonistic-health mix.

One day, I visited my local vitamin shop (there’s one on every corner in the West End and Kitsilano) to buy a bottle of evening primrose oil. As I lingered by the shelf of workout enhancers, the sales clerk sidled up. "Looking for a product to increase your endurance?" she asked. A little something that would help me burn fat, lose weight, moderate appetite, balance blood sugar levels and improve my moods?

The ephedrine effects were almost instantaneous. Within a few weeks, I dropped five pounds, developed little rocks of steel on my biceps, bounded through the three-mile barrier in my run and miraculously found the strength to hold the brutal, standing head-to-knee pose in yoga class.

Alas, the body shaper in a bottle was too good to be true. I was jittery all the time, had trouble concentrating at work and woke up during the night, every hour on the hour. I couldn’t stand it any more. I needed sleep.

As soon as I went off the pills, my energy sank like a rock. I went to another vitamin store. Give me something, I begged. The sales clerk stocked me up with safer herbal stimulants -- extracts such as bitter orange, grapefruit juice powder, green tea and cayenne, plus a maximum strength carb-busting compound.

Then she persuaded me to try a cactus-extract fat blocker, which is supposed to bind to dietary fat and prevent it from being absorbed. "Pop a few pills before you order that pizza," she said excitedly.

But as I handed over a hundred bucks and watched another customer walk out with an armful of protein bars for a pre-Mexican-vacation fast, I paused. This West Coast obsession with dietary supplements and nutritional Frankenfoods can’t possibly be healthy.

It’s not, says Nina Hirvi, a registered dietitian and nutritionist in Vancouver, who believes the most dangerous part is the psychology. "We want to be fit and have perfect bodies with a magic bullet. But that’s the kind of thinking that causes eating disorders and yo-yo dieting. There’s no self-control."

Strict nutritional discipline, mind you, can lead to other conditions. Orthorexia nervosa is a term coined by Dr. Steven Bratman, a Colorado physician and author of Health Food Junkies: Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating.

A recent article in British Vogue cites a growing number of celebrity victims suffering from ritualistic behaviour that can blanch every morsel of pleasure out of eating: Julia Roberts reputedly brings her own soya milk to coffee shops while Gwyneth Paltrow never leaves home without her personal yoga instructor on hand to whip up her macrobiotic meals.

"As orthorexia progresses," Bratman wrote, "a day filled with sprouts comes to feel as virtuous as a day spent serving the poor and homeless."

Virtue? My addiction to supplements is fuelled by the desire to compensate for my vices.

I’m back on ephedrine. It’s off the shelf, but still available if you ask. I’ve reduced my dosage so I don’t feel jittery any more. I know it’s wrong. But damn, did it ever feel good when I ran the entire seawall around Stanley Park the other day. The post-workout cheeseburger tasted even better.


49. Herb Business News
Dermal Pads: Introduces Revolutionary Herbal Pad Delivery System

SOUTHFIELD, Mich., Mar. 27, Internet Wire -- Dermal Pads proudly introduces its new collection of natural herbal health products under the brand name Dexapad(R) and HerbalPad(R). Dexapad(R) is an innovative approach to weight loss, while HerbalPad(R) offers a variety of highly effective natural healing and vitamin replacement products. Dexapad(R) and HerbalPad(R) are the hottest new additions to natural herbal medicine.

If you have difficulty or are tired of taking pills, drinking shakes or mixing powders, we have the solution. Following the overwhelming success with our products by Canadian retailers such as Wal-Mart, Sears, Loblaws, Zellers, Drug Trading, Rexall and Pharma Save, Dermal Pads announces the US introduction of its revolutionary new herbal delivery system.

Instead of having a bag full of herb capsules to carry around all day and remember to take, you will now be able to slap-on one of the new HerbalPad(R) products. These self-adhesive pads release active, concentrated herbal essences into the blood stream, through the skin, over a 24-hour period. No opening bottles. No swallowing horse pills. No digestive problems. Just a continual, easily assimilated release of beneficial herbs from a patch worn anywhere on the skin.

The HerbalPad(R) herbal delivery revolution is being launched with five products:

Dexapad herbal weight-loss aid containing: Kelp, a seaweed full of minerals, particularly Iodine, and other active ingredients useful in weight control; Garcinia Cambogiaan exotic fruit from South India containing hydroxycitric acid; Guarana an Amazonian herb containing a caffeine-like stimulant which reduces the desire to eat; and Chromium Picolinate, a dietary source of Chromium which aids in the burning of fat, the use of cholesterol and in lean muscle maintenance. Echinacea and Golden Seal

An herbal immune system booster particularly effective in aiding in the fight against colds, flu, and sinus infections and infections of the feminine urinary tract, containing: 200 mg of standardized Echinacea; and 100 mg of Goldenseal Root extract.

Ginkgo Biloba

An herbal pad which aids in the treatment of poor circulation, mood disorders, sexual dysfunction, tinnitus, and Alzheimers by interfering with the body’s platelet activation factor.

Glucosamine and Chondroitin

An herbal pad containing 1500mg of D-glucosamine sulfate, 1200mg of chondroitin sulfate, 500 mg of vitamin C and 75 mg of manganese for use in the treatment of arthritis, joint and cartilage problems.

St. John’s Wort

An herbal anti-depressant pad containing 1000mg of standardized hypericin, delivered through the skin over a 24-hour period.

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Garuda Capital: Announces Intention to Acquire Two Businesses


VANCOUVER, Mar. 11, Business Wire -- Garuda Capital Corp. announces the signing of two letters of intent to wholly acquire two separate businesses, both located in Vancouver:

-- Hagensborg Foods Ltd., a BC corporation, is a manufacturer and distributor of fine chocolates and other gourmet food products. The company was founded in 1997 and its gross revenues for the year ended June 30, 2001 were US $1.4 million.

-- Natural Program Inc., a Nevada corporation, is a developer and distributor of herbal remedies. The company is still at the early development stage as the products, marketing and distribution are not yet fully established. The company’s first proprietary product line is currently being test marketed in Vancouver-based health food stores and pharmacies.

Hagensborg will be acquired for consideration of US$1,120,000 cash for all its outstanding share capital and liquidation of certain debentures to be allocated as follows: $600,000 for the common shares, $100,000 for the preference shares and $420,000 for the retirement of the debentures. The current shareholders and debenture holders of Hagensborg have agreed to underwrite this acquisition whereby they will provide the investors that will participate in the private placement financing described below to the extent of providing sufficient cash to complete the acquisition.

Natural Program Inc. will be acquired for consideration of 500,000 shares of Garuda.

Private Placement -- In order to finance the acquisitions and to provide working capital for these operations and funds for future acquisitions the Company is attempting to raise up to US$2.5 million by means of a private placement under an Offering Memorandum for up to 5,000,000 units at US$0.50 per unit. Each unit consists of one common share and one three year share purchase warrant. The warrants are exercisable at $0.50 in the first year, $0.60 in the second year and $0.70 in the third year.

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Hauser: Sells Hauser Laboratories to Microbac Laboratories


LONGMONT, Colo. and LONG BEACH, Calif., Mar. 27, Primezone -- Hauser, Inc. today announced that it has sold its Hauser Laboratories division to Microbac Laboratories of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Terms were not disclosed.

Hauser Laboratories, located in Boulder, Colorado, provides analytical and expert services to meet the advanced chemical and material needs of biopharmaceutical, infrastructure and electronics industries. It also provides methods of development, testing and failure analysis for pipelines and cables, fuels and contaminants, and industrial and consumer products.

Kenneth Cleveland, Hauser’s president and chief executive officer, said: "The sale of Hauser Laboratories is one more step in our plan to refocus on our core business of producing and marketing bulk herbal extracts and nutritional substances. We are pleased to have sold Hauser Laboratories in such a way as to preserve all jobs in that division."

Hauser, headquartered in Long Beach, California and Longmont, Colorado, is a leading supplier of herbal extracts and nutritional supplements. The company also provides interdisciplinary laboratory testing services, chemical engineering services, and contract research and development. The company’s products and services are principally marketed to the pharmaceutical, dietary supplement and food ingredient businesses. Hauser’s business units include: Botanicals International Extracts, Shuster Laboratories, ZetaPharm and Hauser Contract Research Organization.

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Hauser: Announces Licensing of Paclitaxel Technology


LONG BEACH, Calif. and LONGMONT, Colo., Mar. 14, Primezone -- Hauser, Inc. today announced an agreement to license certain intellectual property and provide consulting services to Tisorex, a company headquartered in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which has been formed to produce bulk paclitaxel using raw material harvested from Taxus bacata trees in the Republic of Georgia. As part of the transaction Hauser sold certain manufacturing assets to Tisorex and will receive royalties from Tisorex paclitaxel sales as well as payment for technical services.

Hauser, headquartered in Long Beach, California and Longmont, Colorado, is a leading supplier of herbal extracts and nutritional supplements. The company also provides interdisciplinary laboratory testing services, chemical engineering services, and contract research and development. The company’s products and services are principally marketed to the pharmaceutical, dietary supplement and food ingredient businesses. Hauser’s business units include: Botanicals International Extracts, Shuster Laboratories, ZetaPharm and Hauser Contract Research Organization.

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Herbalife: Expands New Sign Restrictions on Independent Distributors


LOS ANGELES, Mar. 28, Business Wire -- Timothy J. Sweeney, Senior Vice President for Finance and Compliance of Herbalife International, Inc., today announced the expansion of its new sign restriction policy on a worldwide basis.

Last week, Herbalife announced a new policy in the United States and Canada to prohibit its Independent Distributors from posting advertising signs on any public property or on any private property without the express permission of the owner, even if such posting is allowed by state or local laws.

Today, Mr. Sweeney announced the expansion of that policy to its Independent Distributor activities in all countries where Herbalife conducts business. "The expansion of our new policy is a logical step in providing our Distributors with clear and consistent guidance regarding our new sign policies on a worldwide basis," said Mr. Sweeney. "We appreciate the overwhelming support we have received from our Distributors regarding this new policy, as well as the support of the public and numerous Code Enforcement officials throughout the United States and the world."

Herbalife manufactures a wide range of nutritional, weight management and personal care items and markets them in 54 countries worldwide through a network of Independent Distributors who purchase the products directly from the Company.

In 2001, the Company had net retail sales of $1.66 billion.

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IADSA: New Dietary Supplement Trade Associations Join


MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 8, Nutraingredients.com -- Three national trade associations representing dietary supplement producers are about to be established and join IADSA, the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplements Associations.

The three associations represent Hong Kong, Poland and Hungary, and their addition will bring IADSA’s current membership to 38 associations representing more than 9,000 manufacturers and distributors of vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements, an estimated 75 per cent of the global industry. The international market for dietary supplements is estimated to be worth around $40 billion (&euro;45.5bn), nearly 30 per cent of the nutrition products market.

"All of this has happened in the four years since we created IADSA" said chairman Randy Dennin. "IADSA fulfils a unique role in helping to ensure sensible and harmonious international food regulations. National controls are not enough if the world’s consumers are to have equal access to the choice of food supplements and if producers are to meet that requirement efficiently and safely. It is IADSA’s task to represent the views of national associations and their members in shaping global policies that affect dietary supplements and in driving for workable and responsible regulations."

As a result, Dennin said, IADSA has earned a seat at the debating table of the main initiators of global food policy and regulations such as Codex Alimentarius. To ensure that the global industry speaks with one voice, IADSA is actively encouraging the creation of dietary supplement associations wherever there are gaps at national and regional levels and is supporting them with guidance on procedures and exchange of experience.

IADSA provides an important overview of the industry, identifying national and cultural differences and needs. It alerts government officials and the supplements industry to trends, changes and proposed regulations through a monthly news bulletin which reports developments at global, regional and national levels. Its regional conferences bring together expert representatives at the highest levels to share experiences and formulate opinion on the science and the regulations which national governments and member trade associations can use in understanding and influencing proposed regulations.

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Lifesmart: Patent Filed for Noni Soft Chews


SALT LAKE CITY, Mar. 7, Business Wire -- LifeSmart Nutrition Technologies, Inc., today announced that it has filed a patent to protect its intellectual property in regards to their Noni soft chews.

Thorpe, North and Western a leading patent firm, filed the patent on behalf of LifeSmart Nutrition.

Noni is an herb that has gained a lot of popularity due to the antioxidant and other benefits it provides users. Noni sales currently exceed $600 million annually. LifeSmart’s management believes its Noni product is positioned to take a significant portion of the current market share of Noni. Management further believes that its Noni soft chew format is superior in taste and offers a greater convenience compared to the liquid formats of Noni offered by LifeSmart’s competition.

The LifeSmart patent is to protect the unique soft chew delivery system, which uses micronized Noni and a special blend of sugars to enhance absorption. It also will protect the combination of any other herb, vitamin or mineral combination with Noni. It also will protect the unique manufacturing procedure controlling heat temperatures which activate the polysaccharides without effecting the other benefits of Noni.

LifeSmart is a nutraceutical company that has spent the past three years developing an impressive product line geared toward providing great-tasting nutritional products to the masses. LifeSmart has secured relationships to 23,000 distribution outlets and has sold and shipped private label orders to several major national retailers.

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Natural Health Trends: Lexxus Subsidiary Expands in New Markets


NEW YORK, Mar. 28, Market News Publishing -- Natural Health Trends Corp. announced that its subsidiary, Lexxus International, Inc., has expanded into 15 additional markets. Lexxus CEO Terry LaCore announced, in an open letter to distributors, this was "the Company’s biggest achievement to date." Additionally, Mr. LaCore stated that global sales for 2002 have already exceeded expectations, and the new Lexxus markets in Taiwan and Hong Kong are fully operational. Closer to home, President Curtis Broome just recently completed a seventeen-city, twenty-three day tour of North America.

NHTC, which reported net sales of approximately $20.5 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2001 versus $6.5 million for the same period the year before, distributes and markets Viacreme(TM) and other quality-of-life products. "In light of this great news, we feel the Company is greatly undervalued," said Mark Woodburn, President of Natural Health Trends Corp. "Despite trying economic times, it has been truly an exciting and rewarding past few months for Natural Health Trends, as we continue to expand into different parts of the world," he concluded.

About Natural Health Trends Corp.

Natural Health Trends Corporation is a holding company for two operating subsidiaries, ekaire.com, Inc., which sells nutritional supplements and vitamins, and Lexxus International, Inc. Lexxus, started in January 2001, markets and sells the revolutionary new product, Viacreme(TM). Viacreme, developed by a leading gynecologist, is a quality-of-life product that improves the opportunity for women to achieve greater sexual satisfaction. Lexxus International has earned an estimated $17 million in revenues in just its first nine months of operation. The product, Viacreme, received a considerable amount of positive exposure including appearances on Good Morning Canada, FOX News and EXTRA, a leading television news magazine program.

Lexxus International recently announced three additional products to its quality-of-life line. The three products are LaVie, a non-alcoholic Bordeaux manufactured with some of nature’s most sensuous herbs; LexLips, a lip-gloss designed to give the appearance of full and luscious lips; and Skindulgence, a skin-care product with a blend of botanical extracts helping diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

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Nature Made: To Take the USP Test

MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 13, Nutraingredients.com -- Pharmavite, maker of Nature Made vitamins, minerals and other dietary supplements, will become the first participant in a programme designed to build consumer confidence in dietary supplements.

The Dietary Supplement Verification Programme (DSVP) run by United States Pharmacopeia (USP) helps assure a product’s quality, purity and composition through a rigorous inspection process. "We believe the DSVP mark will help safeguard consumers who use dietary supplements," said John Fowler, USP chief operating officer.

"We’re pleased to be a part of USP’s effort to set high standards for our industry," said Tom Zimmerman, Pharmavite vice president of business development. "Nature Made vitamin E was evaluated in USP’s rigorous pilot certification programme and passed. We have committed to the USP DSVP on a broad assortment of additional Nature Made products and we look forward to being the first brand in the marketplace with the official USP verification mark."

The DSVP verification mark will appear on product labels once the certification process is complete. During certification, USP analyses both the product and the manufacturing facility for the quality and integrity of its ingredients, and will ensure continued compliance with DSVP standards by conducting random tests after the mark has been granted.

The DSVP is also designed to complement the US Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation of dietary supplements under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). FDA has not yet finalised Good Manufacturing Practices for the industry.

Once a Nature Made product meets the DSVP’s criteria, that product will be granted use of the DSVP verification mark for display on the product’s front label, Pharmavite said. The company said it anticipated Nature Made products featuring the DSVP verification mark would be on sale by the final quarter of 2002.

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Novogen: Gets U.S. Patent Covering Red Clover Isoflavone

MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 5, Nutringredients.com -- Pharmaceutical company Novogen has been granted a US patent over its use of the red clover isoflavone, formononetin, in the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis is one of the major diseases facing an increasingly aging population, and Novogen pointed to recent studies at the University of Sydney that had shown that red clover-derived formononetin had the potential to promote bone growth by increasing the metabolic activity bone forming cells.

[Source: AAP Information Services]

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Numico: To Restructure US Operations

MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 12, Nutraingredients.com -- Dutch food group Numico has announced that it is to restructure its US operations after a difficult year affected by a downturn in supplement sales. Some 600 jobs are likely to be lost as a result of the changes, which will affect all three Numico operations in the US -- General Nutrition Centers (GNC), Rexall Sundown and Unicity.

Hans van der Wielen, president and chief executive officer of Numico, said he was pleased with the overall position of the company, but added that the changes to the US structure would lead to further improvements.

"In the USA, we experienced a more difficult environment with a weak performance at Rexall Sundown," he said. "We are addressing the issues in the USA, have new management in place and are working hard to leverage our research expertise to capture the benefits of our unique market position."

Changes to the US operations include: the appointment of Peter van Wel as head of the US operations, replacing former GNC chief Greg Horn; cutting $40 million in annual expenses and reducing the workforce by 600; increasing marketing efforts for key brands; and reorganising product development.

Van der Wielen also said he would retire in May and that Jan Bennink, formerly head of Groupe Danone’s dairy unit, would be his successor.

Numico released preliminary fiscal 2001 figures in January, including plans to write down more than $350 million (€400m) in goodwill and brands for Rexall Sundown, although the actual figure has now been confirmed at more then $363 million.

Final figures for 2001 show that the Dutch group posted sales of $2.3 billion from continuing US operations, up 18 per cent. Rexall Sundown’s sales were down 9 per cent in 2001 to $526 million, and the impact of this poor performance was felt on the stock market, with Numico’s shares 2001 dropping from $47 to $23.

GNC was the best performer for Numico in the US, with sales ahead 2 per cent to $1.4 billion. Unicity, an online/multi-level marketing organisation formed from the merger of Rexall Showcase International and Enrich International, posted sales of $306 million, a 7 per cent decline from the previous year. Numico said the decline was caused by a lack of consumer interest in the US vitamins market.

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PanGeo: Buys Canadian Vitamin Business, Quest

MONTPELLIER, France, Mar. 26, Nutraingredients.com -- Canada’s PanGeo Pharma group has acquired the Quest Consumer Health Care business of Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) for approximately C$14 million (€10m).

Under the terms of the deal, PanGeo will acquire the contracts to manufacture products for Boehringer Ingelheim for distribution in the US, as well as distribute Pharmaton products for Boehringer Ingelheim in Canada. PanGeo will also acquire a manufacturing plant, the Quest brand, and other internationally recognised brands.

According to Boehringer Ingelheim, in fiscal year 2001, the products being acquired from Quest Consumer Health Care recorded approximately $18 million in revenue and have shown solid growth over the last five years.

PanGeo said it would continue to position the Quest brand and the international brands as premium healthcare brands in Canada. The addition of 50,000 square foot manufacturing and distribution facilities located in Vancouver, BC, will enhance PanGeo’s production capabilities for the Canadian and Japanese markets.

"This acquisition enhances PanGeo’s contract manufacturing, distribution and brand management capabilities across Canada," stated chairman Ahmad Doroudian. "We continue to execute our strategy by delivering solid internal growth and acquiring significant product portfolios of large pharmaceutical companies which are accretive to PanGeo. Adding Quest and the international brands to the PanGeo family strengthens our presence in retail pharmacies, mass merchandisers and food stores across Canada, and opens new channels of distribution in the health and wellness retail industry."

Quest was acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) in 1993. The division is responsible for managing the sales and marketing in Canada of such international brands as Ginsana, Kyolic, Venastat, Ginkoba and Prostatonin. The division has a manufacturing facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, a national sales force and a sales and marketing office in Burlington, Ontario.

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Pure World: Sales Down, Loss Up in 2001

BEDMINSTER, N.J., Mar. 28, Business Wire -- Pure World, Inc., today announced that for the year ended December 31, 2001, it incurred a net loss of $2,882,000 ($.35 per share) on revenues of $18,371,000 compared to revenues of $24,207,000 and a net loss of $1,591,000 ($.19 per share) for the year ended December 31, 2000.

Results for the year 2000 were favorably affected by a large processing contract which was not a factor in 2001. In the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2001, Pure World had revenues of $3,280,000 with a net loss of $1,833,000 ($.22 per share). In the same quarter of 2000, revenues were $4,856,000 with a net loss of $1,866,000 ($.23 per share).

Paul Koether, Chairman said that the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2001 was materially and negatively affected by the uncertainties left by the September 11th tragedy. Some improvement in revenues is anticipated for the first quarter of 2002 but margins are still under competitive pressure. The Company has introduced four of its "LeanLine" botanical extracts which have been well received. It will shortly add two new LeanLine products. Also available is a new patent pending technology "Pure Powders" (TM) for sanitizing herbal powder without irradiation or Ethylene Oxide. Recently, Europe banned both of these techniques for eradicating microbial contamination opening an opportunity for Pure Powders. All of the new products are expected to contribute to sales in the second quarter.

Pure World has 8,244,634 shares of common stock outstanding.

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Rocky Mountain Ginseng: Change of Control

VANCOUVER, B.C., Mar. 28, Market News Publishing -- Rocky Mountain Ginseng, Inc. announced that the Company had commenced a plan of reorganization to effect a change in the control and the business of the Company. The Company announced that its former board of directors had elected Carlos Fernandez as president and a director and Lourdes Fernandez as Vice President and a director of the Company, and that the Company’s former officers and directors then resigned. Concurrently, the Company stated, the Company’s former president and vice president transferred their shares of common stock of the Company to Prime Rate Investors, Inc., a newly-organized Florida corporation.

The Company intends to change its name to Prime Rate Funding, Inc.. The company anticipates that when the name change is effective, the Company’s trading symbol will also be changed.

The Company also announced a plan to forward split the Company’s common stock to give one additional common share for each 4 shares owned by the owners of record on March 25, 2002.

Prime Rate Investors, Inc., has been formed to buy land and mortgages on a distressed basis at discounts to their market values. Prime Rate Investors, Inc., also intends to buy convertible preferred stock from public companies at a discount to the trading price of such companies’ common stock.

The Company stated that it intends to send a notice of a special shareholders meeting scheduled for April 4, 2002, to its shareholders of record on March 25, 2002. The purpose of the meeting is to accomplish those portions of the proposed plan of reorganization requiring shareholder approval.

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Rona Barrett: Unveils New Lavender Foods And Bath & Home Collection Online


SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Mar. 5, PRNewswire -- Hollywood journalism veteran Rona Barrett, now brings a touch of the good life to the specialty food, bath and home marketplace and the Internet. The newly branded Miss Rona’s(TM) Lavender (formerly Lavender by Rona Barrett) is marked by the unveiling of her new website with new products and informative sections.

Seven new Bath & Home Collection items have just been released including the extremely popular Lavender Anti-Aging Creme with SPF 18. The Lavender Specialty Food line has also been re-branded with a new contemporary look.

"My new brand name and product design reflect my desire to help people experience a touch of the good life. When people experiment with my foods, and try the bath and skin care line, they are immediately delighted with the captivating taste and fragrances from the Lavender herbs," commented Ms. Barrett.

"Now my Bath & Home Collection has been expanded with more products that heal, refresh, and rejuvenate. And all of my products are made with the finest, all-natural ingredients to help you achieve the greatest internal and external benefits from Lavender.

"However, these products do more than just enhance my customer’s life and senses," explained Barrett. "The mission of Miss Rona’s(TM) Lavender and the Rona Barrett Foundation (501c3) is to help Seniors In Need, and support our elderly who made us what we are today. A portion of the profits from the sale of Miss Rona’s(TM) Lavender products is donated to my Foundation."

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Shaklee: Wins International Climate Protection Award


PLEASANTON, Calif., Mar. 25, PRNewswire -- In recognition of its precedent-setting accomplishment in the field of environmental leadership, Shaklee Corporation will be one of only 20 international recipients honored with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2002 Climate Protection Award. The awards ceremony will take place today from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Washington in Washington, D.C. as part of the 2002 Earth Technologies Forum.

"Shaklee has a longstanding history of making the environment a top priority in its business practices," said Robert Schults, President and CEO Shaklee Corporation. "We are privileged to be recognized by the EPA for our leadership in the area of climate protection, and we encourage other companies around the world to take a second look when it comes to their own impact on the earth."

Nominated by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Shaklee was chosen for its cutting edge climate change initiative that was designed to create genuine environmental improvements. Working with the Climate Neutral Network and four leading U.S. environmental organizations, the company became the nation’s first Climate Neutral(TM) Certified enterprise in April 2000 and 2001 by completely offsetting its greenhouse gas emissions, meaning that the company has achieved a net zero impact on global warming.

"It’s no surprise that Shaklee was chosen as one of this year’s winners," said Caley Johnson, Director of the EPA’s Climate Protection Awards. "Its comprehensive climate protection strategy is in perfect alignment with the EPA’s selection criteria, namely: originality and public purpose; leadership and corporate responsibility; global perspective and implication; and reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the international Climate Protection Awards in 1998 in order to recognize exceptional leadership, personal dedication, and technical achievements in protecting the earth’s climate.

"The EPA is not alone in recognizing Shaklee’s environmental efforts," said Ken Perkins, Vice President of Shaklee’s Environmental, Health and Safety department. "Since 2000, Shaklee has also received The California Council for Environmental & Economic Balance’s Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Award; the "Vision For Tomorrow" Award from the Direct Selling Association; and the Earth Day New York Environmental Business Leadership Award."

About Shaklee Corporation

Shaklee Corporation is a diversified health and wellness consumer products company that for 45 years has been developing scientifically tested, environmentally-friendly products which include nutritional and herbal supplements, personal care products, household cleaners, and home water treatment and air purification systems. Founded in 1956, Shaklee is involved in all phases of product development, from research to manufacturing, and sells directly to independent distributors throughout the U.S and abroad. The company is based in Pleasanton, California.

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Twinlab: Fourth Quarter Sales Drop, Loss Increases


HAUPPAUGE, N.Y., Mar. 26, Business Wire -- Twinlab Corporation today announced its results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2001.

Fourth quarter net sales were $43.0 million compared to $57.6 million in the comparable quarter last year. The Company incurred a net loss of $66.8 million or $(2.33) per share for the fourth quarter of 2001, versus a net loss of $42.4 million or $(1.48) per share for the fourth quarter of last year. The net loss for the fourth quarter of 2001 includes non-cash asset impairment charges of $33.8 million primarily relating to the write-down of goodwill and intangible assets of Bronson Laboratories, Inc. and Health Factors International, Inc. ("HFI") and a $27.5 million non-cash charge relating to a write-down of deferred tax assets. The net loss for the fourth quarter of 2000 included a $26.0 million non-cash charge relating to a write-down of deferred tax assets.

For the year ended December 31, 2001, net sales were $199.8 million compared to $242.3 million for fiscal 2000. The Company incurred a net loss of $91.6 million, or $(3.19) per share, versus a net loss of $51.9 million, or $(1.81) per share, last year. The net loss for the year ended December 31, 2001 includes: (i) non-cash asset impairment charges of $33.8 million, discussed above, (ii) a $22.8 million non-cash charge related to a write-down of deferred tax assets ($27.5 million recorded in the fourth quarter, discussed above); and (iii) a loss on the disposition of a discontinued operation of approximately $8.7 million. The net loss for fiscal 2000 included a $26.0 million non-cash charge relating to a write-down of deferred tax assets and $16.0 million in charges related to herbal inventories.

Ross Blechman, Twinlab’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer stated, "Our 2001 results include significant non-cash charges. Excluding these charges, our net loss would have been $26.3 million ($19.0 million during the first half of 2001 as compared to $7.3 million during the second half of 2001). The Company implemented several initiatives during 2001 and continuing into 2002 aimed at improving profitability through enhanced operational efficiencies and reduced fixed costs. These initiatives included:

-- The sales of Changes International, Inc., PR Nutrition, Inc. and Advanced Research Press, Inc., announced in the first half of 2001.

-- A reduction of approximately 10% of the Company’s total workforce through the elimination of salaried positions and manufacturing and warehousing personnel costs, announced in November of 2001.

-- The anticipated reduction of an additional 12% of the Company’s total workforce through the closure or sale of the HFI manufacturing facility, announced in March of 2002.

The benefit of these workforce related actions, coupled with other recent initiatives, are currently anticipated to contribute approximately $15.0 million in annualized cost reductions in fiscal 2002. We will continue the process of refocusing on our core businesses and streamlining Twinlab for greater efficiencies".

Twinlab Corporation, headquartered in Hauppauge, N.Y., is a leading manufacturer and marketer of high quality, science-based, nutritional supplements, including a complete line of vitamins, minerals, nutraceuticals, herbs and sports nutrition products.

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Twinlab: Announces Closing of Manufacturing Facility in Tempe, Arizona


HAUPPAUGE, N.Y., Mar. 4, Business Wire -- In a continuation of its strategic initiatives to streamline operations, increase productivity and become more cost effective, Twinlab Corporation today announced plans to close or sell its Health Factors International ("HFI") plant in Tempe, Arizona.

A significant portion of the production performed by HFI will be transferred to Twinlab facilities located in New York and Utah. Other production will be out-sourced. These actions will result in the elimination of approximately 12% of Twinlab’s total workforce. The manufacturing transition will be phased over the next few months.


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