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Pesticides: the secret ingredient in Chinese herbal products?
Traditional Chinese herbs have a strong reputation for their medicinal benefits, but a Greenpeace East Asia investigation has revealed that these herbs are coated in a toxic cocktail of pesticide residues, posing long-term health risks instead.
In China, these herbal products are extensively used in daily cooking and are part of the country's culinary heritage. Many people add ginseng, red dates or chrysanthemums, for example, to their soups or tea to cure various health problems.
These herbs are also consumed outside China by people looking for alternative medicines in a global market estimated to be worth US$60 billion annually and growing swiftly.
But in its report, Chinese Herbs: Elixir of Health or Pesticides Cocktail?, Greenpeace East Asia explains how it tested 65 samples of Chinese herbal products and found them to be coated in pesticide residues some of them banned in China.
http://www.greenpeace.org/chinese-herbs ... des-report
Many herbal products are cultivated using chemical-intensive agriculture methods and are no longer picked in the wild another example of the dominant chemical-based industrial agriculture system and its failure to deliver toxic-free foods.
Some of the pesticides detected in the Greenpeace East Asia investigation are considered 'highly hazardous' by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Some herbal products had residue levels that would breach European food safety standards.
The WHO and European authorities have already ranked or banned some pesticides because of indications that exposure to some of them via food poses health risks due to bioaccumulation in the body. Chronic pesticide poisoning may lead to learning difficulties, hormone disruption and reproductive abnormalities.
Greenpeace is campaigning globally against what we call 'ugly food' the widespread industrial agriculture model that damages the environment with toxic chemicals and poses threats to human health. Greenpeace champions ecological farming as a more environmentally and human friendly solution to industrial agriculture.
Ecological farming does not rely on chemical pesticides but on natural pest management techniques, rotation and diverse cropping to ensure healthy, nutritious and sufficient food for people while protecting our environment, water and wildlife from toxic poisoning.
Greenpeace East Asia is urging the Chinese government to impose stricter supervision and control of illegal pesticides, provide clear pesticides reduction timelines and commit to a road map to fully phase out chemical pesticides in agriculture. Additionally, we call on the Chinese authorities to divert financial funding towards more ecological farming practices.
We must walk this ecological path now to preserve the future of traditional herbal medicine and food production in China and globally. The challenge to switch to ecological farming and away from chemicals-based agriculture is one that all governments need to embrace.
To find out more, visit greenpeace.org/chinese-herbs
http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/camp ... /?gpi-blog
Alessandro Saccoccio, ecological farming communications manager at Greenpeace International
Eric Darier, senior ecological farming campaigner at Greenpeace International
Source: Greenpeace International
Pesticide residue found in 70% of Chinese herbs: Greenpeace
Taipei, June 24 (CNA) Up to 70 percent of 65 medical herbs sold in Beijing, Tianjin, Hong Kong and other Chinese cities were found to contain pesticide residue, according to the regional office of the environmental group Greenpeace Monday.
Greenpeace East Asia tested the herbs bought from nine well-known retailers and manufacturers, including Beijing's Tong Ren Tang, and ran tests between July 2012 and April 2013.
The results showed that up to 48 herbs contained trace amounts of pesticide.
Thirty-two of the samples contained residues of at least three kinds of pesticide. Panax pseudo-ginseng sold at Tong Ren Tang and Te'anna, a major provider of the herb based in Yunnan Province, and florists chrysanthemum bought at three traditional Chinese pharmacies or pharmaceutical companies contained residues from 25 pesticides, according to the group.
In 26 of the samples, Greenpeace East Asia found traces of six chemicals banned from herbal medicine by the Chinese authorities. They include carbofuran, one of the most toxic carbamate pesticides.
Source: Focus Taiwan
COMMENT FROM HERBS AND HELPERS:
We would like to reassure all our customers, patients and practitioners that all our KPC Chinese herbal products undergo extensive testing for pesticide residues including independent European testing to European Quality control standards:
https://herbalmedicineuk.com/Pages/page5.htm
If you have any concerns then please get in touch:
info@herbalmedicineuk.com