A gigantic part of preventing economic adulteration, supply chain management--which I'll delve into more in a future post--doesn't have to be an internal procedure. Dr. Keri Marshall, MS, N.D., the medical director at Gaia Herbs (Brevard, NC), explains the company's Meet Your Herbs (MYH) program. To see it for yourself, click here.

The care that Gaia Herbs takes to cultivate, harvest, source and verify the botanicals in each of our products is a demonstration of our commitment to Purity, Integrity and Potency. Through our traceability platform called Meet Your Herbs™ (MYH), consumers are able to trace the origins of the botanicals in their product and find out where the plants are grown and the path they follow to becoming a finished product. This program gives confidence and understanding of where the herbs are grown, whether it is on Gaia Herbs certified organic farm in Western North Carolina, or by one of our partner Certified Organic Farmers, gathered by our Land Steward Harvesters, or purchased from a Validated Partner. It provides proof that each botanical lives up to our standard of excellence, is validated for identity and is tested for heavy metal, pesticides, microbes, and other contaminants.

Gaia’s initial launch of MYH set up a basic framework for retailers, consumers, and practitioners to see that it is possible to know pertinent elements of a botanical supplement’s purity, integrity, and potency. Gaia Herbs will continue to evolve this framework as both technical capacity and public involvement increases. As people come to see and expect that the MYH framework tells them what they are interested in knowing about botanical quality, it should cause a demand-driven response among all serious and credible botanical products companies. Botanical extracts come from the Earth. They come into commerce through horticultural, wild harvesting, and value-added manufacturing processes—all of which can be known to an individual in a particular product’s supply chain. If this information is shared truthfully, readily, and transparently, it will tend to build more credibility with consumers.

At Gaia, we believe absolutely that consumers will become more and more empowered to make responsible wellness decisions for themselves and their families when they become more educated about quality control parameters that pertain to a given botanical supplement. The Internet has become a powerful learning tool and, coupled with high quality botanical text references, scientific studies and consultations with family doctors, that people can overcome misperceptions about a particular botanical supplement’s safety, efficacy, or intended uses. At the end of the day, we have nothing to hide and want consumers to have complete transparency through truth of purity.