A New Chance to Save Herbal Medicine
The Cabinet Office Red Tape Challenge presents an amazing opportunity to scrap the dreaded European THMPD regulations and get the pharmacists out of herbal medicine. Please click this link and tell the government that the THMPD reduces choice, increases prices and offers no additional safety benefits
The European THMPD regulations are destroying herbal medicine please help to get the pharmacists out of Herbal Medicine.
The MHRA are treating herbal medicines like pharmaceutical products. They insist on stability tests costing tens or huindreds of thousands of pounds meaning fewer herbs are on the market, they cost a lot more and because they are standardised they are less natural. For example different harvests and weather conditions produce slightly different phytochemicals in echinacea. The pharmacists say we must have a standardised echinacea product where we adjust these variations during production to ensure the phytochemicals in each bottle are 100% the same. Herbal medicine has never worked that way. All plants are not the 100% identical and don't need to be. It's the equivalent of saying all carrots should be exactly the same colour, the same length and the same weight.
The MHRA hide behind a false cloak of safety where there have never been any safety issues.
Help Save "Organic" Herbal Medicine
If the Red Tape Challenge does not end the THMPD we still need to battle the MHRA to allow products to be called organic
In addition to presenting a general threat to herbal medicine the MHRA are specifically attacking "organic" herbal remedies. Policy from the MHRA states that the word "organic" can only be used in smallprint or footnotes on labels for licensed herbal medicines.
The MHRA say "the use of the word organic is promotional"
We say "the use of the word organic is factual and essential for consumer choice"
New legislation that came into effect at the end of April 2011 means that 70% of the range we sell will have to be licensed. As the MHRA is run by pharmacists, they have required a lot of laboratory testing and made the licenses prohibitively expensive, favouring larger companies. We can only afford a few licences but we are doing what we can to stay in business. We will be able to sell existing stocks through over the next year or two while we get as many licenses as we can, however, this crazy policy from the MHRA threatens the future of organic herbal medicine.
We set up this business to bring high quality organic herbal medicine to British consumers. The MHRA says we cannot call the product "organic" and we cannot show the Soil Association logo on the outside of the packaging. This will prevent you, the organic consumer, from identifying organic herbal medicines on the shelf in health food shops.
The finalised policy is shown at the bottom of this page.
How you can help
Please email your MP asking him/her to ask Andrew Lansley the Health Minister why he is allowing this crazy policy.
Your MP's email address can be found at www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/ or if you don't know your MP's name go to http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/
Tell your friends and ask them to take action too
If you have a twitter account then tweet at Andrew Lansley who can be found at @dhgovuk or follow us on twitter @organicherbal and RT our tweets on this subject
Let us know that you care by sending an email to info@organic-herbal-remedies.co.uk and let the Soil Association know you care too. They are also lobbying the MHRA on this issue so show your support by emailing their campaigns director mconisbee@soilassociation.org
If you would like some help with what to say to your MP then you can copy and paste the note below.
I am very concerned with the MHRA policy regarding the use of the word "organic" on labels for licensed herbal medicine. The policy hides the word organic in footnotes and in the small print. It does not allow organic in the product name or organic certifiers' logos on the label. This will make it very difficult for consumers to identify organic herbal medicine.
The problem would appear to arise because the MHRA is run by pharmacists who consider the word "organic" to be promotional rather than factual. They do not see proper organic labelling as essential for consumer choice.
Could you please write to Andrew Lansley and ask him to review this policy with a view to helping consumers easily identify organic herbal medicine.
Thank You for Your Help
Together we can help save organic herbal medicine from the pharmacists
Click this link for the final policy from the MHRA.
