In comments submitted last week to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) urged the agency to refrain from using its authority to effectively remove a plant from the existing marketplace because naturally occurring constituents become scheduled under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

AHPA stressed that non-food products, including personal care products, may be agricultural products that can comply with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP).

The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) recommends the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) consider initiating rulemaking to declare vinpocetine to be lawful dietary ingredient in comments submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) has approved the reappointment of Wynn Werner and P K Davè as co-chairs of the AHPA Ayurvedic Products Committee during the AHPA Board of Trustees meeting at SupplySide West in Las Vegas on Oct. 5.

AHPA President Michael McGuffin presented an overview of U.S. regulations for botanical raw materials at the 2016 Korea-China Joint International Phytonutrient Symposium organized jointly by the Korean Society of Food Science and Technology (KoSFoST) and the Chinese Nutrition Society and held on October 27 in Seoul, Korea.

IADSA is an association focused on the globalization of food supplement markets and regulatory challenges. This issue of the IADSA Newsflash includes an update on the European Commission (EC) request of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to provide a scientific opinion on the safety of green tea catechins with a proposed deadline of October 2017.

This article, "A caution to industry and regulators - 'Incidental DNA fragments' may be misinterpreted using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)," is authored by Dr. Steven Newmaster, Professor, Botany & Genetics/Genomics at the University of Guelph, Dr. Subramanyam Ragupathy, Senior Scientist, NHP Molecular Diagnostics at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, and Dr. Robert Hanner, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at TRU-ID Ltd. These leading DNA experts detai challenges and pitfalls of DNA analysis used to verify the identity of herbal ingredients.

The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) sent a letter to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) urging the agency to reconsider using its emergency scheduling authority to temporarily place constituents of the herb kratom into schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).