The new extensions of Proline Botanicals will be opened on Friday, 2nd October 2009 by James Wong, presenter of the BBC2 series Grow Your Own Drugs.
All medical herbalists, students of herbalism and friends of Proline Botanicals are invited to the event which will start at 11 am and finish at approximately 3.30.
To confirm your place on the guest list please e-mail andrew.hoyle@prolinebotanicals.com with your name and address.
In the past no national newspaper has been more hostile to herbal medicine than The Guardian. They have lost no opportunity to denigrate herbalism, particularly in their highly tendentious Bad Science column. They have continually provided a platform for Professor Edzard Ernst in his incessant campaign to lump all complementary therapies together and damn them all equally.
Over the years this hostility has puzzled (and sometimes hurt) medical herbalists. The Guardian is supposed to be open-minded and yet where herbalism is concerned no benefit of the doubt is ever allowed. The Guardian is supposed to champion environmentalism and yet they ignore the one medical profession that opposes animal testing, places an emphasis upon environmentally-sustainable production of medicines and follows a holistic approach that favours living in harmony with the natural world.
Possibly in its sustained support for the NHS (which we applaud) The Guardian newspaper sees all other medical practitioners as private and therefore BAD. But if this is the case they are overlooking all the NHS professionals (nurses, GPs and even consultants) who are working with herbalists on treatments and therapies for their patients. And although medical herbalists may be working in the private sector no-one can accuse them of siphoning money from the NHS (most herbalists went into the profession for love not money, the fees they charge are extremely reasonable, and most GPs would be aghast if they had to run a clinic on the slender resources available to the average medical herbalist).
But credit where it’s due. The Guardian’s travel section on Saturday 27th June 2009 included a full-page article with an astonishing number of favourable representations of herbal therapies. Here are a selection of quotes from the article:
“…comfrey, which can be used to make a salve to treat bumps and bruises…”
“…fumitory, used in an infusion to help conditions such as eczema…”
“…garlic halts tooth decay at the same time as sorting out your digestive tract…”
“Nettles… are a diuretic and good for the kidneys when taken as a tea or tisane.”
“Lemon balm – a cousin of mint – aids digestion…”
“…the yellow goo that seeps from the stalk of greater celandine is a natural wart treatment…”
Of course, the herbalist they quote is not a member of the National Association of Medical Herbalists, and the article was placed in the less-than-serious Travel section, but to see any positive treatment of herbal medicine in the pages of the Guardian worthy of mention.
Read the article for yourself!
Left: the European Court of Justice is located in this intimidating building in Luxembourg.
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Hi folks,
I feel it is time for a bit of a rant as I haven’t indulged in any ranting for some time. My rant for today revolves around the European Court of Justice, clearly presided over by some jobsworth bureaucratic morons, commonly known as judges. You know these people - so stuck up themselves that if you contradict them in court you are charged with contempt (contempt! no surprise when they are so contemptible!).
So just what is that that has riled such a normally mild mannered herbalist supplier?
This goes back a few years, so please stay with me, and thanks to the BHMA for highlighting this.
In 2003, Frede Damgaard a Danish journalist wrote about the arthritis and gout benefits of Hyben Total, a rosehip product, on his website and noted it was legally available in Sweden and Norway. Lægemiddelstyrelsen, the Danish medicines control agency, took umbrage at this and informed Damgaard that his statements “constituted advertising” in contravention of Danish law. He was found guilty in 2005. Note: Damgaard has no connection with the product or company marketing it.
The case was referred to the European Court of Justice who duly upheld the Danish decision. Freedom of speech? Freedom of the press? Certainly not when it comes to natural products.
To quote from the verdict:
The ECJ placed great emphasis on public health and noted that freedom of expression rights written in 1950 into the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, was subject to “certain limitations justified by objectives in the public interest”.
It therefore found that statements about products could be construed as advertising under the 2001 Medicines Directive “even though the third party in question is acting on his own initiative and completely independently, de jure and de facto, of the manufacturer and the seller of such a medicinal product.”
You can just imagine how journalists will now be running scared about saying anything positive about herbal products. And can’t you just imagine the glee with which this will have been received by the authorities here.
What a bunch of twits. The sooner we get away from Europe and the self serving corrupt idiots that run it the better.
Regards,
Tony
Check back to this site for further monitoring of how the European entity is “harmonising” herbal medicine out of existence.
Here at Proline Botanicals we suffer from one fatal character flaw - we are perfectionists!
So apologies are due to all those herbalists who have been lobbying us to hurry up and open our new on-line shop. It took us a long time to get the design right, but we think the wait has been worth while. Why not see for yourself by clicking on Enter Shop and registering your details - there is no obligation just to have a look!
Not only are all our tinctures and fluid extracts listed, but you can also order Essential Oils, Creams, Pessaries and much more.
The website generally is expanding, and as well as the on-line Shop there is also the Students’ Forum where herbal “apprentices” throughout the world can make friends and discuss issues of mutual interest in a very lightly moderated forum - please encourage any student herbalists you know to sign up and get involved.
We are also expanding our Find A Herbalist facility so that members of the public who find their way onto this site (and there are a surprising number) can be redirected to a medical herbalist in their area.
Plus we have so many initiatives we plan to launch from this site that we hope you will check back often or sign up to our RSS facility.
Like the seeds of Taraxacum officinale our hopes and plans for the future are streaming off into the golden sunshine where they will germinate and grow to fruition.
You are most welcome to enjoy the harvest of our efforts.
It’s snowing again here in Essendine but so far not the heavy snow we had last week.
Left: you can see the view last Thursday from the Proline car park looking across the valley! If you have any snow 2009 pictures send them in and we’ll put them up here! Just e-mail them to
Another year has started and it is a good moment to look ahead and try and guess what 2009 has in store for herbal medicine
The on-going economic crisis makes me philosophical – as herbalists we believe in treating the holistic condition, and I think this has to go for the economy as well. There was too much greed and materialism over the last ten years and it was obvious the system wasn’t at ease with itself. Let’s hope as we go through this recession we become a much healthier and greener society, putting the environment first and caring for each other.
Here at Proline we have an exciting twelve months to look forward to. Following our structured programme of investment and expansion, we are almost doubling our production capacity, improving our warehouse and building new offices for our admin staff. I am very proud that we are able to do all this from savings and retained profits, without having to borrow from the banks!
This expansion means we are able to take on more staff, which is very important given our rural location where employment opportunities are few. Essendine is a very beautiful village, but there are not many openings for young apprentices. We will train our new staff in the basics of herbal medicine production, let them experience every department and then see where their aptitudes lead them – although we aim for efficient economies of scale, we are organized in small teams of threes and fours, which means if someone wants to specialize in a particular production method there is scope for them to do so.
We have many new products in the pipeline which I hope to be able to present to you as the year unfolds. We will also continue to produce small one-off batches of rarer tinctures (because of limited quantities these are often sold-out as soon as they appear in our lists, so please contact us early if you spot anything you want). Our fresh organic tinctures are also experiencing renewed interest, so we will be looking to give them greater emphasis in the months ahead.
Quality Control has expanded greatly over the last six months with the creation of our in-house laboratory and overhaul of our systems as we approach 2011. Our strong belief is that without external monitoring quality statements are meaningless. Therefore our GMP-led quality drive will continue throughout 2009 as we aspire to produce the finest herbal medicines in the world.
Please remember that you are always welcome to visit us at Proline – we will be happy to give you a tour and introduce you to the staff.
Tony and the Proline Team
Thank you to those herbalists who have forwarded to us the e-mail communication from Kerry Bone at MediHerb.
We would like to respond in AN OPEN LETTER TO KERRY BONE
Dear Kerry,
1. First of all let us apologise for the errors in the MediHerb section of the survey where we wrongly stated six extracts to be 1 in 2 instead of 1 in 1. In a survey of this size and complexity we knew a few typos would creep in and we are happy to put the record straight.
2. In your communication you say that your high prices are justified because of “a unique percolation technique”. On your website you say this unique percolation technique is “known only to MediHerb”. I am sorry Kerry, but this is really not good enough. If it is truly “unique” why don’t you simply patent the process and tell the world of this supposedly crucial advance in percolation techniques? A patent would give you worldwide legal protection. The fact that you have not patented it suggests there is no unique process that justifies your higher prices.
3. You refer to six specific comparisons of MediHerb products with Proline products which supposedly show the MediHerb products in a favourable light. However you do not tell us what batches the Proline samples were abstracted from, the analysis methods used and the validation. In addition to this, not only do we not know the batches you have tested, nor do we know their age. At Proline we made a significant number of specification changes throughout 2008; it is entirely possible and indeed probable that any testing you have conducted was prior to these changes. These omissions render your response somewhat meaningless (if you will forgive us for saying so).
4. The comments you make regarding alkyl amides are a fair point, and we are aware of your belief that all of the activity (or at least most of it) is due to the action of alkyl amides. However, in the United Kingdom most herbalists believe that the polysaccharides are also active. We are aware that it is a very simple matter to raise alkyl amide levels simply by further increasing the alcohol content used for extraction, but we have chosen so far not to take this route.
5. You say we have left some products out from the survey – let us know what these are and we will be happy to include them.
6. You have entirely ignored the environmental issues we raised. Your own website states that 60% of the herbs you used are sourced from outside Australia. Therefore they are IMPORTED INTO AUSTRALIA, processed, and then EXPORTED TO EUROPE. In the case of the many herbs you source in Europe (the Tribulus you import from Bulgaria and Slovakia for instance) by the time you present them for sale in the United Kingdom they have been around the world TWICE! This is a completely irresponsible business model environmentally speaking.
7. Finally, you have in your e-mail compared selling herbal medicines with selling cars. Possibly in Australia car salesmen have a high professional status, but in the United Kingdom they are a by-word for extravagant claims, inflated prices and poor environmental considerations. You may wish to compare yourself to a car salesman, but we entirely repudiate the comparison.
Yours faithfully
The Proline Team.
The original e-mail from Kerry Bone is available on this site (apparently it will be up for one week from 22nd December) http://senduit.com/428814
NOTE: we have received feedback saying that our price survey is invalid because we have compared organic products with non-organic products. This is absolutely NOT the case – we have compared like for like in all instances (and this can be verified by examining competitors websites with the Proline catalogue). We would also advise herbalists to treat claims by manufacturers to be “all organic” with some caution – if you look at their websites you may well find that less than 50% of their product range is organic.
Well, after a lot of hard work we have finally published our survey of herbal medicine prices in the UK.
There was a lot of internal debate here at Proline about whether we should make the survey public. Some argued that we should hold it privately and develop specific pricing policies to maximize our profits (this is what the supermarkets do when they target local shops by undercutting them on particular ranges). I decided we would take the long view and release the information to herbalists everywhere.
I did this for the simple reason that we are going into a nasty looking recession and herbalists, along with everyone else, are going to feel the strain.
It is in no-one’s interest if, over the next couple of years, twenty per cent of herbal practices go out of business. I have said before, many times, that we are all in this together. Our best hope for the future is to support a thriving network of medical herbalists serving a greater number of patients – and that means herbal manufacturers charging fair prices and offering high quality.
The reason we began the survey was to get an overall picture of herbal medicine prices and where Proline was positioned in the market. Anyone who has tried to make sense of the different catalogues and websites will know what a confusing and frustrating picture there is – you can’t easily compare one manufacturer’s products with another. Added to this is the rollercoaster of commodity prices in 2008 with the costs of raw herbs shooting up earlier in the year only to fall back later on and now to increase again as the Pound grows weaker and weaker against the Dollar and the Euro.
With this survey you can now see the price different manufacturers are charging for each herb and at the same time consider the many aspects of quality and how you prioritise them.
Our policy is to use high-quality reliable growers, and to pay them fairly so that they can produce herbs through good times and bad (we all know agriculture is at the mercy of the weather, especially for organic growers who don’t rely on chemicals to force growth). We check, test and process those herbs using exacting standards independently audited. I have been accused of nagging people to death over the issue of GMP standards, but it would take only one serious incident of a contaminated medicine causing serious harm and the whole of herbal medicine would be damaged for years to come. Maintaining GMP audited standards is not cheap, but we can still produce high-quality herbal medicines at a fair price.
Regards,
Tony
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