By: Svetlana Pasarić |
Shame - a third of plant species is being withdrawn from the market due to the adjustment to the EU regulations |
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Do you like hawthorn tea? Do you use bearberry for treating urinary tract infections?
Do you make comfrey wraps? Unfortunately, something like this will soon be impossible, at least with purchased plants.
Because of the alignment with the EU law, manufacturers of medicinal herbs will soon have to withdraw a large part of their range from the store shelves.
Suban - the largest producer of medicinal herbs in Croatia – has already removed 30 percent of its products due to the alignment with the legislation of the European Union.
Among the prohibited medicinal plants were:
- ivy
- comfrey
- hawthorn
- St. John's wort
- oak
- mistletoe
- pansy
- bearberry
- walnut leaf
- wormwood
- coltsfoot
- distaff
- celandine
- Senna
- milk thistle
- valerian
- and many others.
New rules on food supplements were published in the National Gazette on the 8th of April 2013, the adjustment should be carried out by the 30th of September 2013.
After that date, manufacturers of medicinal plants will no longer be able to package and sell these products.
For plants that are still allowed to sell, the package will no longer be allowed to contain a single health claim, i.e. a statement on what effect that plant has on human health.
Health claims for a particular plant will first have to be submitted for a special consideration to the Commission.
However, over the years the Commission has not approved any health claim related to medicinal plants.
The more complicated, the better
Plants and other substances in the new Regulation are not listed as permitted will be put on the Croatian market only if they get a "notification number" (Article 9 of the new Regulation).
The applicant for the notification number must submit a number of documents and chemical findings to the Ministry of Health, while the Ministry may or may not approve the request.
Why is this so?
It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry has interfered. It is clear that they have no interest in people being treated in a healthy and affordable way.
Herbal remedies generally cannot be patented, so no one can count on huge revenue from licensing rights.
While the manufacturers of medicinal herbs are satisfied even with low incomes, the pharmaceutical industry is only interested in making a fortune on drugs.
Since manufacturers of herbs represent a competition, the pharmaceutical industry is doing all it can to "sabotage" them.
And for that it needed a little help from the legislators. In our case, the main allies of the pharmaceutical industry are the European Commission and the national parliaments.
However, we do not have to follow everything that Europe requires. While each member of the European Union follows the rules on food supplements, each country determines its own list of allowed and prohibited plants.
In this country, a list of rules on the use of herbs is defined by the Croatian Drug Agency and we can only wonder under whose guidelines the Agency worked in this case.
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