ginseng and fungicides

September 23, 2000

According to springwind herbs, there is a ginseng contamination alert.

I reproduce the notice below and suggest these issues are going to

worsen in the years to come. Ginseng is a valuable world commodity and

unless we boycott routinely contaminated herbs, the Chinese will have no

interest in complying with US law on this matter. No agricorporation is

going to risk losing a 3 year old ginseng crop to fungus as long we

continue to blindly purchase the material. If you puchase from a

company other than springwind, I suggest you contact your supplier to

sort out this matter for your patients' sake.

> Here's the scoop:

> There is a fungicide called Quintazine (sp?) which is considered by

the FDA

> to be very toxic. The FDA does not permit it in Ren Shen, although it

is

> used extensively in the growing or processing (I'm not sure which) of

Ren

> Shen. The FDA does, however, permit Quintazine in some green

vegetables.

> No details on that. Spring Wind has been systematically testing it's

most

> commonly used herbs for chemicals and hadn't gotten down the list yet

to Ren

> Shen when this news about this came to them, so they tested their

Chinese

> Ren Shen and found it contains this fungicide. Now they are searching

for a

> source of Chinese Ren Shen sans Quintezine, and at this time do not

have any

> Chinese ginseng to sell.

--

Chinese Herbal Medicine

September 23, 2000

REGARDING: Quintozene-free ginseng

About two years ago I started looking into the availability of quintozene

free ginseng. Here are some of the things that I learned at that time and

communicated in a previous email exchange. Excerpts are pasted below.

The sources for quintozene-free ginseng in China are mostly from farmers in

two different growing areas in Heilongjiang, one of the northern provinces.

Right now (11-98) there are only about 100 tons of quintozene-free raw

materials still available on the market, although the annual harvest for

quintozene-free ginseng has been around 1,000 tons during the past two

years. Cost of raw materials varies for different parts of the ginseng

plant. In the past three years there has been increasing demand for this

type of product in Japan, Europe and America so farmers are paying more

attention to what chemicals they use to grow ginseng. There is now a farm

that is cultivating quintozene-free ginseng on fields which cover over

15,000 square meters. However this farm is only a couple of years old so

the ginseng is still young and has not yet reached high levels of

ginsinoside potency.

According to Chinese standards, ginseng that is tested to have less than

0.2ppm quintozene is accepted as quintozene-free. Since the US standard

and detection limit is substantially less at 0.01ppm of quintozene, we have

had to test each batch that is being considered for purchase. Part of the

problem is that residual quintozene is in the soil from previous years of

use and can show up in the plant. However, extraction processing using

certain processing techniques has shown to lower the quintozene content in

the final ginseng powder.

A communication from our Chinese JV partner (Jan. 99):

As you know, the scarcity of the Q-free ginseng is a problem, sourcing this

kind of ginseng is not as easy as sourcing others, however, we have

communicated with several suppliers, but the quantity available is not

large. I do not know how much you know about the degree of ginseng in China.

We call the large and nice ginseng root as " high quality ginseng " , and small

and ugly ones as " normal ginseng " . This is a traditional criteria, " high

quality " does not refer to the content of ginsenosides or chemical residues,

but just the looks, in fact, normal ginseng contains as much (if not more)

ginsenosides as high quality ginseng, and as the raw materials are grown in

the same soil condition, the content of chemical residues are the same.

There is a large gap between the price of high quality ginseng and normal

ginseng, so it is definitely wiser to use normal ginseng instead of high

quality ginseng if we want to lower the cost and get a better quotation.

Unfortunately, there is not much normal ginseng available in China, because

the growers send the normal ginseng to pharmaceuticals as materials, and

keep high quality ginseng in inventory waiting for exports in order to

pursue higher profit margins. So if Botanica places a large order, say, 20

metric tons, then we have to use a lot of high quality ginseng as material

which is much more expensive, but only nicer looking, not better than the

cheaper material. So this is a ridiculous situation, the more you buy, the

higher the price will be.

Stephen Morrissey OMD

Saturday, September 23, 2000 11:32 AM

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