Herbal Legislation Update

After April 2011 Woodland Herbs will only be able to sell tinctures for internal use which have been authorised. The 2004/24/EC Directive came into force in 2004, and the industry was given until 2011 to get authorisation for their products. Unfortunately the cost has been prohibitive for many companies (including Woodland Herbs).

This means that we will no longer be selling our herbal tinctures (with our company’s name on it) for internal use. We will be selling tinctures, from other companies, which have been authorised. The majority of our tinctures will be from Vogel (Bioforce). The number of herbal tinctures available will hopefully increase over time as companies manage to get more of their products authorised. This also applies to the availability of capsules and tablets. We currently do not have a complete list of the herbal products we will be able get hold of after April, as a number of companies have not been able to inform us of their full list of products after this date.

We can sell dried herbs for non-medicinal use, therefore the availability of dried herbs will be reduced. Herbs we use as foods (chamomile, peppermint, jasmine etc) or other non-medicinal uses (rose, lavender etc) will be kept. It is surprising how many of these herbs there are.

Article 5.1 of the directive says that herbs may be prescribed by an authorised healthcare professional, which now includes herbalists. This needs to be made after a one-to-one consultation, therefore it is not possible to phone Woodland Herbs for a telephone prescription of the herb you are wanting. A list of medical herbalists registered with the National Institute of Medical Herbalists can be found on www.nimh.co.uk

Woodland Herbs currently offers a dispensing service which a number of medical herbalists in the UK use. We are investigating how it will be affected after the changes.

Only this month was it was announced that the status of herbalists is to be changed in 2012 to allow them to practice after April 2011! Apologies we cannot be of more use as we are still working through the implications.

Graham