Recently , the American Herbal Products Association(AHPA) Governing Board voted to amend a provision regarding the definition of ” herbal extract” for commercial labels. At the same time , AHPA asked its members to comply with new labeling rules by September 11,2010, and to make relevant adjustment to their labels .
The new provision contains two main points : first , it bans the usage of “extract ” to describe any herbal ingredient that has not been extracted by solvents; second , it prohibits the use of fix-quantity terms such as “20:1 ” as a description in labels. For example, the herbal product hoodiastem (Hoodiagordonii)is currently using the term “Hoodiagordonii extract(20:1)” on its label to boost its sales.
In addition ,AHPA Council also voted for the following extracts label guidelines : for any non-liquid herbal extracts, when using the ratio of two numbers (such as 20:1)to represent the quantitative extraction ratio, the first number should represent the intial weight of plant material ,and the second number should represent the weight of the extract .AHPA also made it mandatory to point out whether the plant material is fresh or dehydrated.