Medicinal Plant News Service Releases Fourth Edition

Medicinal Plant News Service Releases Fourth Edition

GENEVA--Market News Service (MNS), part of the InternationalTrade Centre, published the fourth edition of its newsletter on medicinal plantsand extracts in September. The newsletter covers regional reviews about theprimary producing and consuming areas, including North America, Western Europe,Eastern Europe, China, Japan and India. Among the coverage for each section areregional demand, indicative raw material prices, product profiles and upcomingtrade fairs. This edition also includes several special features, including atechnical profile on aloe, a regional focus on Egypt, and regulatory highlightson the international trade of kava.

The kava regulatory update provides a succinct, but sobering, look at theregulatory status of kava. MNS noted that since Germany's BfArM enforced a banand recall in June 2002 on kava products, "a domino effect has taken placeamong national health authorities worldwide banning kava, for the most part,without any new or significant evidence to base their decisions on." Thesituation is an "economic disaster" for producers and traders in thePacific Islands, with growers going out of business or not harvesting crops."It is sobering to observe how vulnerable a high-demand economic medicinalplant crop can be in the world market," MNS noted. "In this case, anentire producing region of the Pacific Islands spent years gearing upinfrastructure and production capacity in order to meet an ever-increasingdemand, mostly from Europe and North America. In a matter of a few short months,Germany's BfArM ... and others ostensibly destroyed the world trade ofkava."

For more details or to subscribe, visit www.intracen.org/mns.