American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) > News

Our Mission

The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) is the national trade association and voice of the herbal products industry. Founded in 1982, AHPA's mission is to promote the responsible and sustainable commerce of herbal products to ensure that consumers have informed access to a wide variety of safe herbal goods. AHPA’s Vision is for high quality herbal products to be readily accessible to and broadly used by consumers.

Our Expertise

AHPA has particular expertise on the history, science, and regulation of botanicals while its work also has significant influence on non-herbal dietary supplements. Similarly, AHPA expends its resources on issues in the U.S. marketplace and in the international arena, wherever member interests are served.

Our Members

AHPA is comprised of more than 350 domestic and international companies conducting business as growers, processors, manufacturers, and marketers of herbs and herbal products. AHPA members’ herbal products are in tea, beverage, dietary supplement, sports nutrition, personal care, pet and other product categories. AHPA membership also includes individuals, companies and organizations who serve the industry, including consultants, attorneys, media, researchers, educators, and medical professionals.

AHPA Chief Science Officer presents at Shanghai International Conference on TCM

Dietary Supplement Industry and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency Warn Consumers about Dangerous, Illegal Ingredients Known as SARMs

Groups support strict enforcement action by FDA

The dietary supplement industry’s leading trade associations and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) today joined in support of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent actions to protect consumers from body-building products containing Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs) illegally marketed as dietary supplements.

FDA's history of deeming supplements drugs (or not) in the November 2017 AHPA Report!

November 2017 AHPA Report

Guidance on test methods used to identify ethanol

November 2, 2017: AHPA members can log in to access this guidance

Guidance covers a number of physical, chemical, spectrometric and chromatographic methods for the identification of ethanol.

Guidance on foreign matter limits in herbal ingredients

Guidance recommends plant parts of the same herbal raw material species, other than those named in specifications, should not exceed 5% (by weight), and all other foreign matter should not exceed 2% (by weight)

AHPA board actions at SupplySide West meetings in the October 2017 AHPA Report!

October 2017 AHPA Report

AHPA presents recommendations for pre-DSHEA dietary ingredient list

McGuffin highlights significant issues with FDA's current approach

AHPA President Michael McGuffin stressed that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must make some significant changes to previous positions on new dietary ingredients (NDIs) in order to successfully create an authoritative list of old dietary ingredients (ODIs) in a statement delivered yesterday at a public meeting held by FDA to discuss the development of a list of pre-DSHEA dietary ingredients.

Proposition 65 cases involving tea products in the September 2017 AHPA Report!

September 2017 AHPA Report

AHPA encourages submission of supplement labels to online databases

AHPA will continue to offer constructive feedback on these publicly available dietary supplement product label databases

AHPA issued the following statement regarding a recently-adopted position to encourage members that market dietary supplement products under their own brands to submit labels for inclusion in at least one of the two now extant and publicly available dietary supplement label databases.

Good Agricultural Collection Practices and Good Manufacturing Practices for botanical materals

Best practices and assessment tools help ensure quality of botanicals at every step of the supply chain

AHPA has developed a set of free assessment tools to help the herbal products industry evaluate and document policies and procedures that ensure high quality herbs and herbal ingredients throughout the supply chain. The assessment tools are designed to be used with AHPA's recently released Good Agricultural and Collection Practices and Good Manufacturing Practices for Botanical Materials (GACP-GMP).

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