ABC pinpoints ongoing adulteration challenge in the botanical industry

10 Apr 2024 --- As demand for botanicals continues to increase and suppliers face cost and supply chain issues, the American Botanical Council (ABC) warns that the continued availability of adulterated and fraudulent botanical materials remains one of the biggest challenges in the industry. Meanwhile, companies bring new botanical materials to the market with improved bioavailability and efficacy.

The organization aims to promote the safe and effective use of herbs and medicinal plants by educating the public through science-based and traditional information. 

Nutrition Insight discusses the developments and drivers of botanical adulteration with two ABC experts — Mark Blumenthal, its founder and executive director, and Stefan Gafner, the organization’s chief science officer. 

“All too often, we see cases where materials are either substituted, diluted with undisclosed material or spiked with various compounds from other lower-cost plants so that they’re intended to fool the prevalent laboratory analytical systems designed to identify the material because the first job in quality control is identity,” says Blumenthal. 

To tackle adulteration, he recommends companies “ensure the proper identity of the medicinal plant material first, and then go to purity and strength as second and tertiary considerations, all required by GMP (good manufacturing practices) rules.” 

Meanwhile, Dr. Gafner emphasizes the need to check that scientific research papers are robust as he sees an increasing impact of AI on the industry. The concern is that AI could “create scientific publications that are very hard to distinguish from real science.” 

“In 2023, 10,000 scientific publications were retracted based on flawed or fabricated science. They’re not all concerning the botanical ingredient industry — it’s probably a small percentage — but still, it’s something that industry members should be aware of if they have a substantiation dossier.”

Brief adulteration history 
ABC started its Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP) at the end of 2010 to educate members of the herbal and dietary supplement industry about ingredient and product adulteration. Its first publication was “A Brief History of the Adulteration of Herbs, Spices and Botanical Drugs,” written by botanist and researcher Steven Foster.  

“Our article on the history of adulteration goes back to Greco-Roman times — 2,000 years ago. We’ve documented all these case histories in the literature of economically motivated adulteration,” says Blumenthal. 

Stefan Gafner, ABC’s chief science officer, and Mark Blumenthal, its founder and executive director.At the same time, adulteration may be accidental, for example, due to poor training, inadequate information or human error. However, he stresses that this is not fraud because “there’s no intent to deceive the customer.” 

He adds that last year, Dr. Gafner was the lead author of a BAPP publication that showed how adulterers are intentionally contaminating products “to offer a cheaper, lower cost product to make money on. They’re designed to produce a false reading on the prevalent laboratory analytical methods employed by industry, in-house laboratories, third-party analytical laboratories and even government laboratories.” 

BAPP also regularly publishes guidance on adulterating botanicals, such as European elderberries and their extracts. 

“We have a paper coming out, which is in peer review right now, on botanical extracts that are diluted in various ways to reduce the amount of active material that the customer doesn’t realize is the case,” Blumenthal continues. “That’s another form of adulteration. It may be the proper material regarding the identity, but its amount, the strength of it, is less than what is optimal or even possibly active.”

He cautions that this dilution of materials can harm their beneficial physiological effects, which is why consumers take herbal products. 

Economical and supply chain drivers 
Gafner underscores that economic and supply chain challenges feed into the issue of adulteration. 

“We have ingredients coming from all over the world. For example, we have issues in the Horn of Africa with pirates and attacks from Yemen. Then ships will have to go around the Cape, increasing costs.” 

“Inflation also increases the costs, so there is more and more financial incentive for fraudsters to sell low quality, diluted or adulterated ingredients that end up in our products. That’s something we see as another trend leading to an increased risk of adulteration.”

Economic and supply chain challenges feed into the issue of ongoing botanical adulteration.He adds that costs also impact sustainability in botanicals. Although this is key for the industry’s future, farmers producing sustainable materials, ingredients and plants have higher costs than conventional farmers. 

“A certain segment of the consumers can afford to buy products that are made sustainably. That’s a challenge we’ve seen, and the price pressure is big. We have a fragmented industry and several low-cost products that are challenging to compete with.” 

New botanical materials 
There is an increased interest in materials with enhanced absorption, explains Blumenthal. These include liposomal-based extracts or ingredients that link liposomes with botanical extracts to increase bioavailability and absorption rates.

He also sees an increased production of “new botanical materials from the laboratory,” such as cell-based or tissue culture-based botanicals, competing directly with conventionally or organically grown botanicals.

“There are some companies that are focusing in that area, which is an interesting challenge because of the cost factors that might be presumed to be relatively higher for those that are being done by tissue cultures, but the companies claim that they can be cost competitive with items that are organically or conventionally grown for botanicals like echinacea.”

Blumenthal notes that this intersection of biotech and traditional medicinal plant materials could become very interesting. “How they’re going to fare in the market and how these things show up and how they compare chemically and biologically with conventionally grown materials is an interesting part of the conversation.” 

By Jolanda van Hal