Why Should I Care? Herbs on the Open Market

A key distinction in sourcing herbs is whether the end buyer can trace them to the source or not. Certifications like Organic, Fair for Life, and FairWild, require a company to keep a paper trail of each step of the plant’s journey that is audited by a third party. Companies may often have internal standards that require this paper trail through internal assessments. These are based on a company’s internal assessment not third party audits. Traders selling herbs on the open market rarely have any information about where or how the plants were grown, how and when they were harvested, how they were processed, and they were handled along the way. While companies may rigorously follow good agricultural and good manufacturing practices, they also may not. They may be harvested from the side of a busy road or from meadows or fields far from factories, pesticides and other pollutants. They could be dried on a tin roof or concrete sidewalk in the hot sun or on racks under shade cloth. They could be stored in sacks that had been re-used—we saw plenty of herbs shipped in re-used cement bags in India—or uncovered in a pile in a big storage room, exposed to dust, humidity, rodents, and more. Adulteration, incorrect species identification, harvesting plants at the wrong time, drying them poorly, mixing in moldy plants in hopes they won’t be noticed, bad storage facilities (including huge barns where herbs are stored in open piles, exposed to dust, cobwebs, and rodents) are just a few of the problems. Those in the industry describe the extraneous matter that comes in the shipments of herbs: parts of metal, cigarette butts, scraps of newspapers, etc. The list goes on. All bets are off, we were told again and again, when you buy on the open market. Even if the end product does pass quality control tests set by the FDA, is this how you want your medicine treated?