While adulteration has been around since ancient times, it has garnered headlines in recent years as testing has revealed sub-potent ingredients, misbranded ingredients and, most egregiously, deliberately adulterated ingredients. It’s not a simple issue and it will take a multi-pronged approach to address the situation.
Education and open dialogue is certainly a critical part of this process. During Health & Nutrition Week—a week-long lineup of events, meetings, training and activities alongside Hi Europe—I’ll be chairing a two-day conference programme, ‘Adulteration and Fraud of Botanical and Natural Health Ingredients: Issues, Challenges and Prevention Tools for the Industry.’ Set for Nov. 29 and 30, the programme was developed as a collaboration between the American Botanical Council (ABC), Euromed, Hylobates Consulting and Smart Short Courses.
The topics are designed to dive deep into the issues, and also offer time for informed dialogue. The speakers and topics include:
The Nature and Magnitude of the Adulteration Problem: The event opens with Mark Blumenthal, the founder of ABC, offering an update on the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program; this initiative is designed to offer tools and education to suppliers and buyers about not only the types of ingredients most commonly adulterated, but what they can do about it. Further insights will be shared by Prof. Anna-Rita Bilia from the University of Florence, exploring quality control testing considerations to prevent adulteration.
Response from Industry at the Global and EU Level: Mark’s colleague Stefan Gafner will discuss applications of the BAPP initiative, Bauke van der Veen of the European Herbs Growers Association will specifically focus on sourcing as a solution to adulteration, and Michel Horn from the European Federation of Associations of Health Products Manufacturers will showcase EHPM’s quality model.
Regulatory and Consumer Considerations: Patrick Coppens of Food Supplements Europe is prepared to look at how the EU botanicals industry views adulteration and is working to prevent it, while Len Monheit of Trust Transparency will share a consumer trust scorecard to help guide buyers and sellers interested in targeting key audience segments.
Tools to Avoid and Prevent Adulteration and Fraud: Speakers including Agustin Villar and Anna Mula of Euromed; Prof. Johannes Novak of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna; Julian Diaz from BotaniCert; and Luca Bucchini from Hylobates will offer their perspectives and insights into different testing tools and controls. Attendees will also have the ability to work through case studies and hypothetical situations to underscore the learnings.
Full information and registration details are available here. Taking place at the Marriott Hotel in Frankfurt, this workshop is designed to complement related programming at Hi Europe.
