Quality Assurance - The MediHerb® Benchmark
At MediHerb®, our commitment to quality governs all aspects of product development and manufacturing. We assure quality at every step, from source to bottle to dispensary, ensuring that our practitioners and their patients can access the highest potency and purity herbal extracts in the world.
In our 30+ years of operation, we have encountered a myriad of issues impacting quality, safety and efficacy. Our ever-evolving, stringent testing protocols and processes guard against substitution, adulteration and all emergent issues of poor quality.
Herbal Identity and Purity
MediHerb®’s quality control laboratory analyses samples from every batch of raw herbal material we use, approving only those batches that meet or exceed our strict quality criteria.
Depending upon the specific herb, the quality assurance process includes testing raw material for:
- Colour
- Aroma
- Texture
- Validation (of species and part plant)
- Efficacy (actives and phytochemical profiles)
- Identification (Thin Layer Chromatography)
- Microbial levels
- Extraneous matter
- Pesticides
- Heavy metals
- Aflatoxins
- Radiation
These processes ensure that all plant material approved for use in our MediHerb® products are of the correct species and plant part, have the optimal active constituent profile and are free from all forms of contamination.
Herbal Substitution Case Study
Golden Seal (Hydrastis canadensis) is one of the most expensive and difficult to source herbs, so hidden substitution with other species is commonly encountered.
Some of the herbs typically substituted for Golden Seal are Coptis (Coptis chinensis), Indian Barberry (Berberis aristata), and Oregon Grape (Berberis aquifolium).
These species do not contain hydrastine, the active unique to goldenseal; they contain only berberine and berberine-related compounds. They do however, produce an extract of the same colour as Golden Seal. The berberine from Golden Seal and the herbs listed above is a potent antibacterial agent. However, it is only the hydrastine that is believed responsible for the unique trophorestorative effects of Golden Seal upon mucous membranes. The presence of hydrastine and the differentiation of adulterants in raw materials is easily determined with HPLC and is a reliable way to identify correct species for this herb.
