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European Union to Outlaw Herbs

  • Spence Cooper
  • January 4, 2011

Based on the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD), all herbal medicinal products sold in Europe after 30 April 2011 must have prior authorization before they can be marketed in the EU.

A company that specializes in all aspects of licensing herbal products as medicines claims that as of 2011, herbal medicines will require full licensing throughout the European Union. In any European country after this date it will be illegal to sell or supply any herbal medicine that has not been licensed.

As the Independent points out, herbal practitioners say it is impossible for most herbal medicines to meet the licensing requirements for safety and quality, which are intended to be similar to those for pharmaceutical drugs, because of the cost of testing. The cost of obtaining a license is estimated to be between £80,000 and £120,000 per herb. The licensing requirements were deliberately contrived to ensure that virtually no herbs could qualify.

“The problem is you can’t get a license for many herbal medicines because they are grown in people’s back gardens and you can’t patent them,” says Michael McIntyre, the chairman of the European Herbal and Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association.

And Dr Rob Verkerk says, “Thousands of people across Europe rely on herbal medicines to improve their quality of life. They don’t take them because they are sick ” they take them to keep healthy. If these medicines are taken off the market, people will try and find them elsewhere, such as from the internet, where there is a genuine risk they will get low quality products, that either don’t work or are adulterated.”

Of the hundreds of herbal remedies under threat are Cascara bark which helps stimulate a sluggish bowel; Pau D’Arco, an anti-inflammatory used for infection control; Ashwagandha or winter cherry, another anti-inflammatory for arthritis and boosting the immune system; Skullcap, used for anxiety, headaches and pain relief; Meadowsweet, used for stomach acidity, diarrhoea, headache; and Horny goat weed, used to enhance libido. Even peppermint has been classified as a controllable medicinal herb.

By employing these draconian licensing requirements, the pharmaceutical industry can eliminate competition from natural methods of healing found in herbal remedies and nutritional supplements. Now people will be forced to obtain a doctor’s prescription and rely on pharmaceuticals — many of which are ironically derived from plants to begin with. “At least a quarter of the prescriptions written in the United States contain at least one product that has been derived from a plant.”

Most of the rural population in the world relies on herbal medicine as their only health care. “In village marketplaces in China, India, Africa, and South America medicinal herbs are as common a commodity as vegetables and pottery. In the United States it is estimated that more than 60 million people take herbal remedies resulting in a $3 billion market for herbs.”

Similar Restrictions in USA Inches Ever Closer

In the U.S., where raw milk threatens Big Dairy, Police State measures are being enacted regarding the sale of raw milk in which regulators are seizing dairy products at gun point from raw milk clubs. In one case, a farmer was prosecuted for refusing to give authorities information about his customers.

And last February, the FDA sent a Warning Letter to the president and CEO of Diamond Foods claiming the company’s walnuts are drug products in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The FDA came to this conclusion because the company suggests walnuts are beneficial to human health.

The FDA has also threatened cherry growers for suggesting that cherries reduce inflammation and pain based on Harvard scientific research. The FDA sent an injunction letter to growers threatening legal penalties and jail.

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide

When these oppressive and prohibitive herbal measures find their way across the pond — and they will — if you’re thinking you can circumvent any future restrictive U.S. herbal legislation by just growing herbs in your own back yard, think again. Because as Eric Blair points out: The Tester “Small Farm” Exemption to S.510 is nothing but a scam.

The herbs growing in your little backyard garden will still be under the ever-present eye of Big Brother.

“The amendment has been sold to the critical public as ‘exempting’ small farms and food producers from the entirety of the heavy-handed regulations of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.

“Even if Grandma wants to sell her famous raspberry jam at the county fair (within 275 miles of her canning kitchen) she will indeed be qualified for small producer exemptions, but not before she forks over 3 years of financials, documentation of hazard control plans, and all local licenses, permits, and inspection reports. She must submit this documentation to the satisfactory approval of the Secretary; and if she fails to do so, the entirety of S.510 can be enforced on her. That’s hardly what I would call an exemption.”

European Union to Outlaw HerbsIt is corporate behemoths that control and poison our food supply with thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals, and it is corporate behemoths that treat us with pharmaceutical chemicals when we get sick from the chemicals in the food we eat. When and if people finally grasp the magnitude of this overall design of total enslavement it will be too late.

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