What Do You Know About Herbal Safety?
What Do You Know About Herbal Safety?
Herb quality and safety has been a concern of the public. In order to ensure the base efficacy and safety of TCM products, it is advised to choose the products manufactured by GMP-certified companies. Inappropriate planting, harvesting, processing, and storing are the factors of inferior quality of herbal medicinals. Therefore, the government should work with herb growers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and even practitioners to enhance and verify the best quality and safety of Chinese herbal medicine.
Recently, the government of Hebei, China decided to make this province of safe food and medicine within five years. Therefore, the local governments will report on inferior medicine by March and start to monitor safety of medicine since April this year. This represents the determination of government to enhance the supervision system of food and medicine and upgrade the standard of raw herbs and manufacturing.
In China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the governments set strict standards for commonly used Chinese herbal medicinals. The Department of Health (DH) signed a contract with Taiwan's China Medical University (CMU) for sample collection and research on Chinese materia medica under Phase V of the Hong Kong Chinese Materia Medica Standards (HKCMMS) Project. CMU was Taiwan’s first academic institution in where Chinese medicine and pharmacy programs were provided.
Source
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http://big5.ce.cn/gate/big5/12365.ce.cn/zlpd/zlqglt/201103/25/t20110325_20956183.shtml
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http://eng.sfda.gov.cn/cmsweb/webportal/W43879537/index.html?UID=DWV1_WOUID_URL_43879537
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http://news.ifeng.com/mainland/detail_2011_03/24/5334707_0.shtml
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http://news.sina.com.hk/news/2/1/1/2061375/1.html