Joanna Cosgrove08.12.10
Ever wonder where the herbs in your botanical supplements came from? No, not came from as in from a manufacturing facility, but from where they were actually harvested? In an effort to increase product transparency and boost confidence in product quality, Brevard, NC-based Gaia Herbs recently launched an ambitious program that enables consumers of their herbal supplements to track the path their products took from field to their cupboard.
Dubbed "Meet Your Herbs," consumers and retailers are able to retrieve information about the company’s products by entering an ID number from the package into the Meet Your Herbs field on Gaia Herbs’ website or through a new mobile device application. Curious searchers will find lot-by-lot traceability of the regional origin, harvest story, and quality test results of the company’s herbal ingredients and finished products.
Many herbal and dietary supplement products bear seals affirming various quality assurances, however, Meet Your Herbs conveys all available aspects of the herbs used in Gaia Herbs’ products, including ingredient information, botanical information, grower certified organic status, harvest date, identity validation and methodology, and purity testing results for heavy metals, microbials and other adulterants.
“We believe that every herb needs to be held to the highest standards of purity and integrity in order to ensure maximum potency and results for our consumers,” commented Ric Scalzo, herbalist, founder and CEO of Gaia Herbs. “We also feel that it is not enough to simply state these claims, so we are offering accountability through complete transparency with our Meet Your Herbs traceability program.”
Gaia Herbs is presently the only medicinal herb manufacturer to offer this broad type of disclosure to retailers and consumers alike. “Currently at this time, August 2010, there are no other botanical supplement companies that have built a system that comprehensively provides product and ingredient specific traceability information via the Internet and smart phone apps,” said Keri Marshall, MS, ND, Gaia Herbs' medical director. “This is likely to change in the next year based on what we have seen other companies begin to put together. Our program is 23 years in the making, so it will be enormously difficult to match in its entirety.”
She went on to explain the breadth of information conveyed by the new program. “Each step of each herbal ingredient’s life cycle in every product—from where it is grown, to how it is certified, extracted, and validated—is presented transparently to consumers in this program,” she said. “The Meet Your Herbs summary page also identifies that each product has passed our rigorous purity and integrity tests. We further provide a link to the Certificate of Compliance, providing test outcomes and qualified laboratory staff signatures, for each finished product. We know authenticity is a deep concern to many consumers, so Gaia Herbs facilitates greater consumer trust and understanding through transparently disclosing key purity, integrity and potency elements through Meet Your Herbs.”
Consumers are also able to understand whether the botanical in a product is grown at Gaia Herbs certified organic farm in Western North Carolina, or by one of the company’s partner Certified Organic Farmers, gathered by its Land Steward Harvesters, or purchased from a Validated Partner. “Each botanical lives up to our standard of excellence and is validated for identity and is tested for heavy metal, pesticides, microbes and other contaminants,” she said.
To complete the branding process, Gaia Herbs also unveiled new packaging comprised of 100% recycled paperboard cartons for its Liquid Phyto-caps and a brighter green label for its liquid extracts.
A demo of the Meet Your Herbs traceability feature is available at Gaia Herbs’ new website: http://new.gaiaherbs.com.