Botanical partnership formed to tackle adulteration in dietary supplements

15 Jul 2021 --- A new partnership has been formed to address the ongoing issues with adulteration in the dietary food supplements space.

The American Botanical Council (ABC), the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia (AHP), and the ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP) are all involved in the partnership, which will share access to resources on botanical ingredients.

The International Association for the Advancement of High-Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC Association) in Rheinfelden, Switzerland is also playing a key role in the collaboration.

“Establishing botanical ingredient quality and authenticity is a global challenge and needs a global solution – hence there is a global aspect to the partnership,” Stefan Gafner, the American botanical council’s chief science officer at ABC, tells NutritionInsight.

“The goal of this partnership is to help the dietary supplement industry to deal with adulteration by providing access to up-to-date information and appropriate quality control tools.”

Open access to information
According to the memorandums of understanding, members from ABC and AHP will have free access to HPTLC Association’s botanical quality information, including research, analytic and electronic content.

Additionally, they will have access to the association’s HPTLC analytical method collection, containing 285 different entries for herbal ingredients.HPTLC Association aims to spread information on the quality and safety of botanical ingredients.

“Based on current market data and market predictions, we expect that the use of herbal dietary supplements and herbal medicines will continue to increase in Europe and North America, at least in the near future,” Gafner states.

This is echoed by Innova Market Insights’ data, which reveals that botanical and herbal supplements increased by 25 percent in 2019.

HPTLC Association moves
The HPTLC Association, founded in 2012, is an international, non-commercial association with 100 members from 18 countries. The association promotes the use of HPTLC in plant material analysis and other fields.

Additionally, it helps to improve the quality of traditional herbal medicines and herbal dietary food supplements by ensuring high quality standards.

The HPTLC Atlas is an online resource that enables laboratory analysts to compare the chemical variability of plants from other geographical areas.

The Atlas also provides chemical fingerprints from known confounding materials (used as adulterants) to help quality control personnel in companies involved in the botanical supply chain.

“BAPP and the HPTLC Association produce freely available resources that will help in the authentication of botanical ingredients and finished herbal dietary supplements or herbal medicines,” Gafner affirms.

Importance of botanical ingredients
Industry players have spotlighted the importance and multifaceted use of botanical ingredients.

In this space, botanicals, probiotics and collagen were previously found to be beneficial for healthy skin.

Meanwhile, Pharmactive’s Affron ingredient, a saffron extract, has been linked to improved psychological symptoms in perimenopausal women.

By Nicole Kerr