Quality Assurance and Safety of Herbal Dietary Supplements   全文下載

Quality Assurance and Safety of Herbal Dietary Supplements

Since the U.S. Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) in 1994, herbal products represent the fastest growing segment of the VMH (Vitamin, Mineral supplements, and Herbal products) industry. To ensure consumer health protection, the quality and safety of raw herbal plants used for dietary supplement preparations must be determined. To date, safety issues concerning potential side-effects and toxic contamination of herbal products have not been adequately addressed, and toxicological data on the identification of genotoxic and tumorigenic ingredients in many raw herbs are also lacking. The recent pet-food poisoning problems in the United States reflect manufacturers’ inability or negligence in the implementation of proper quality control measures in the manufacturing process and alert us to the importance and urgency of safety assurance for herbal dietary supplements products as well.