September 8, 2011

Buyers of Herbal Medicines – BEWARE! - P3

This blog is about the errors committed by manufacturers of herbal medicines. Unless the manufacturers make major mistakes and get caught in the government web, you seldom hear about their mistakes. Getting caught by the government is often for serious mistakes and making advertising claims that brings them under scrutiny. Or they committed an error that has the American Medical Association up in arms. Some of these mistakes are unintentional and not serious, but the AMA feels it is in their best interest to put them on the hot seat.

Manufacturers make all kinds of stupid mistakes and some could be sabotage caused, greed, or putting ingredients into a supplement and not on the label. The last cause is their most common mistake and often the most serious. They want to have something that will do what it is not supposed to do and generally they get caught.

Herbal manufacturers are a different breed of manufacturers that often are looking for the one item that will make them have something that no one else has thought of and make them rich.

The one mistake that I believe all herbal medicine manufacturers make is not doing due diligence in guaranteeing the consistent formula manufacturing, guaranteeing consistent quality of product, and meeting some of the manufacturing standards they proclaim to follow.

They are constantly under attack by the AMA and a few other groups for the wrong reasons, but they have not consistently raised their manufacturing standards to follow a guide set forth by the Federal Drug Administration called the “Good Manufacturing Practices” standard. Even though many of the herbal manufacturing associations claim they are, consistently it is found that there are rogue manufacturers that violate these standards.

In this article by Jon Barron, he does make some valid points, but you need to get past a lot of rhetoric and almost hysteria to understand what he is saying. His mantra against the AMA is well based and valid, but he needs to leave the rhetoric out to be more convincing.

In the final blog in this series, I will look at the mistakes on the government side.

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