 |
|
|
|
Boom in herbal remedies could push plants to brink
Local merchants are concerned that the healing plants could be facing extinction
By Mary Spicuzza
With overflowing shopping carts wedged strategically close to the free goodies, the grocery store's crowd swarms around the sample table. At the center of the ruckus, a matronly woman tucks a tight gray curl behind her ear and delves into her sales pitch. With a grandmotherly tone, she praises the featured items--four varieties of herbal-fruit fusion drinks--for incorporating ancient medicinal wisdom and modern convenience.
"This is the stuff the American Medical Association doesn't want you to find out about," she says, grimacing.
All around her, heads bob in agreement as the sage triumphantly cracks open another bottle of ginseng-laced nectar and pours more samples into tiny paper shot glasses. One gulp of cool tonic later, we walk away knowing we've transcended the conspiracy and tapped into the wisdom of the ages--known in modern times as alternative medicine.
Regardless of rumors of AMA conspiracies, there's little that's "alternative" about herbal medicine these days. Herbs are big business: the American Botanical Council estimates the U.S. market for herbal remedies at nearly $4 billion a year--and growing quickly.
According to a Time magazine cover story in November devoted to the botanical medicine craze, last year 7.3 million Americans took echinacea, a popular purple-petaled plant known for its power to boost the immune system. The same week as Time's sojourn into holistic healing, the AMA devoted an entire issue of its publication, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) to exploring alternative medicine.
What the articles and most glowing grocery store displays fail to mention is that many medicinal plants now face unprecedented threats to their survival.
Leading herbalists fear that the alternative medicine boom, while increasing awareness of the healing power of plants, is contributing to their demise. United Plant Savers, a group devoted to preserving medicinal plants, says unsustainable exploitation of best-selling herbs now threatens wild populations of market favorites like goldenseal, echinacea, American ginseng and black cohosh.
These popular plants, besides lining the aisles of natural food stores across the country, are now turning heads in corporate America. As market competition and profits rise, the future of the plants powering the "natural" products industry grows ever less certain. With small companies unable to strike a balance of sustainability, conservationists fear what large pharmaceutical giants cashing in on the herbal craze will mean for the survival of medicinal plants.
Monica Keller, the owner of Willow Glen's House of Nutrition, leads me past shelves stocked with herbs and vitamins to her quiet back room. Although thrilled that so many folks have taken an interest in herbal medicine, Keller is also concerned about the herbal medicine boom.
"Often the people selling in big companies don't educate people about what they're taking," Keller says.
Keller, who has run the Lincoln Avenue shop for the past 15 years, has had a lifetime of education about holistic health. She grew up in Germany, a country that has always had a strong interest in herbal remedies, and she learned countless folk remedies from her herbalist grandmother.
Keller feels that educating consumers about products and how they were grown is the solution to good health for people and plants alike. She and her assistant, Marlo Valencia, advocate source labeling of products. They refuse to sell products like Lady's Slipper, which was pushed to the brink of extinction in the 80s due to its popularity.
"You have to be educated when you purchase herbs, or any products," Keller says.
Most mass market companies don't have herbalists on staff, but are still making big bucks on the herbal remedies craze. Wal-Mart raked in $500 million from natural remedies in 1997, and mass-market companies like Bayer and American Home Products have launched herbal lines. Even Costco recently expanded its selection of herbal products, and Smuckers is introducing a flavor of fruit preserves with echinacea.
Elizabeth Burgess, herbs and supplements buyer for Campbell's Whole Foods Market on Bascom Avenue, says that the company does favor organically cultivated herbs--which reflect a concern for wild herbs' predicament. But she says Whole Foods' buyers do purchase products from wildcrafted herbs, and that, to her knowledge, the company hasn't stopped selling certain herbs due to conservation concerns.
Eighty percent of the world's population, according to the World Wildlife Fund, has relied on plants as the primary source of health care for centuries. But Americans are notoriously ravenous consumers, and herbs are flying off the shelves nationwide. According to the American Botanical Council's HerbalGram, 37 percent of consumers report using herbal medicine last year, shelling out $121 million for St. John's wort and nearly $100 million for ginseng. The anti-anxiety tonic kava kava and black cohosh, used as a menstrual regulator, are poised to become the next big thing.
Because of their popularity, wild American ginseng, goldenseal, echinacea, black cohosh, slippery elm and kava kava top the "at-risk list" of the four-year-old United Plant Savers. UpS spent the last two years creating its first lists of threatened plants.
"We want to assure the increasing abundance of medicinal plants," UpS board member Richo Cech says. "They're in decline due to shrinking habitat but also because of expanding popularity. More and more, precious herbs are now being mined out of our forests."
Cech says that as many as 250 wild medicinal herbs are threatened or endangered.
Last year, UpS's Chris Robbins completed phase one of his study of the plight of wild American ginseng, or Panax quinquefolius.
"We picked ginseng because it represents the quintessential medicinal plant," Robbins says. "It's been used for thousands of years, but now it's under assault from habitat loss and is being used as a resource more and more. As wild ginseng is shipped out of the country--much of it going to Hong Kong--we're exporting our natural heritage."
Last year's ginseng study follows on the heels of a 20-year project conducted by a coalition of scientists, conservation organizations and botanical gardens, including the Nature Conservancy and the Smithsonian Institute's Natural History Museum. The resulting "Red List" determined that more than one out of every eight plant species worldwide is at risk of extinction.
While experiments cultivating herbs have been successful, favorites like echinacea and ginseng aren't ready for harvest until three to five years after planting. And goldenseal is difficult to grow on the farm, preferring the shady forests of the Appalachian foothills to flat fields. Without economic incentives to invest in farming, most companies favor the quick returns of buying from wildcrafters.
Although groups like UpS are trying to break stereotypes that cultivated herbs are less potent, there's still a mystique around roots pulled from the wild--for centuries, wildcrafters have insisted that herbs grown in the forests have stronger healing powers. Many companies still push wild herbs as more authentic in high-priced marketing campaigns.
While some say the demand for cultivated herbs guarantees their supply, activists insist the stakes of such a gamble are simply too high.
"People have been talking about this for years. But while everything has been said, nothing has been done," UpS Executive Director Rich Leibman says, his New York accent softened from nearly 20 years of life in Hawaii.
Roy Upton agrees. General manager of Santa Cruz's Planetary Products, makers of nationally popular Source Naturals and Threshold Herbs formulas, Upton sees this as a worldwide problem demanding action.
"We have to make this a political issue," he says. "It's naive to assume companies will do the ecologically responsible thing just because they're involved in holistic health. We need to develop a Medicinal Plant Proclamation, like the conservationists who met in Thailand to talk about endangered species 20 years ago. We're trying to tell people, 'Look, save the plants that save lives.'"
|
|
|
|
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
