By Eric Brand

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, Blue Poppy is working with a top-notch supply chain and sophisticated authentication procedures when we select herbs for inclusion into our products. When we discussed launching a granule line, we knew that we were arriving relatively late to the granule market, so we decided early on that we would need to make a product that was distinctive in every way. We knew that we would need to win customers by beating our competition in terms of potency, dissolvability, transparency, quality, and value.

Quality is not something that can be faked or established with advertising alone. Granules, like raw herbs, can be readily assessed based on their flavor, fragrance, and potency. Above all, practitioners can tell quality based on the clinical effect that we see in our patients.

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The ultimate secret lies in relatively simple principles: One must replicate the traditional decoction process, because our knowledge of Chinese medicine’s effects is largely based on the historical use of full-spectrum water-based extracts. One must master the retention of volatile oils and concentrate extracts without damaging active constituents, which is beautifully achieved by the new generation extraction technology that we use. Assuming that these two basic needs are met, the most important element in creating truly premium extracts lies in sourcing quality raw herbs.

Yesterday I mentioned that some of our herbs are grown at Hunan Nature’s own GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) farms, which allows Hunan Nature to control all aspects of cultivation as well as finished product manufacturing. Items that cannot be grown in the farming regions that Hunan Nature is affiliated with are sourced from stable wholesalers. During my recent trip to Hunan Nature, I was able to meet our wholesalers and inspect their products one-by-one. I was thoroughly impressed by the freshness, accuracy in species discernment, and quality grading that I saw.

The Sourcing Procedure

All incoming batches of raw materials are first purchased in a small quantity by a trained buyer, who brings the sample to our quality discernment expert. As a GMP-certified facility, Hunan Nature is required to follow the standards of the official Chinese Pharmacopoeia when it comes to species discernment and quality assessment. The Chinese Pharmacopoeia spells out precise requirements for organoleptic assessment, TLC, HPLC, microscopic identification and other parameters, and all the products used by Hunan Nature are examined carefully to make sure that all these different elements line up accordingly. After it meets the approval of our senior pharmacy expert, the item is analyzed with TLC and HPLC to ensure its potency and authenticity.

Finally, a large batch of hundreds of kilograms is commissioned; when it arrives, it is thoroughly examined and re-tested. The contract with the supplier dictates that the herbs will be rejected if the large batch does not conform to the initial sample. The supplier is never paid until after all the herbs from the main lot have cleared the quality control screening process. The contracts not only utilize a system of delayed payment, they also stipulate that the supplier must pay all the transportation costs of any product that is rejected. These terms minimize the presence of inferior goods and encourage long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with suppliers throughout China. Such a sophisticated supply chain requires extensive experience and relationship-building, and Blue Poppy is very fortunate to be intertwined with experts who have been doing exactly this for decades.

At Blue Poppy, we are first and foremost dedicated to being providers of quality information for the profession. Blue Poppy has produced dozens of books and offers over a thousand free research articles online; Bob and Honora have worked tirelessly to educate practitioners and advance the profession for decades, and our whole business model is centered on raising the educational bar in our profession (knowing full well that highly educated practitioners eventually gravitate towards our products). We work hard to produce an abundance of reliable and relevant clinical information, and our expansion into our new line of products specifically aims to enhance practitioners’ understanding of herbal medicine as well as their clinical success.

By expanding into a new product line, we have the opportunity to educate practitioners on the choices available in the modern world of Chinese medicine. We aim to teach people what to look for in products, with the underlying knowledge that we are truly benefiting patients and helping to alleviate human suffering by empowering and educating thousands of practitioners. You will see us constantly writing about things such as traditional quality discernment, proper species differentiation and dosage. Most importantly, we will continue to emphasize the importance of transparency and trust. We believe that practitioners deserve to practice in a professional landscape that is characterized by openness and clarity regarding raw material sourcing, manufacturing methods and concentration ratios.

We are proud of our raw materials, production methods and quality control. We hope that our openness and transparency will inspire a transformation in the field. When Blue Poppy first began, information based on primary Chinese sources was much less accessible to the average practitioner than it is today. Dozens of books and hundreds of articles later, we have helped students to gain a better understanding of the diversity and sophistication of the field of Chinese medicine. Over time, the bar has risen throughout the entire field of Chinese medical literature, and many authors have stepped up to the plate with major contributions.

When it comes to herbal medicine, we hope to see a similar transformation in the overall field. At present, many suppliers are hesitant to provide full disclosure on key information such as concentration ratios and excipients. Given that the ethical practice of medicine requires that we know how the quantity of the medicine that we are prescribing, we at Blue Poppy feel that it is important to lead a revolution for increased transparency.

Just as the English literature has matured over the past few decades, we hope that more and more herbal suppliers will follow our lead and give practitioners full disclosure and increased transparency. The opacity that currently dominates the field serves the business interests of the industry at the expense of the practitioners and our patients. At Blue Poppy, we dream about the day when transparency is the norm and not the exception. It is time for the community to band together to make this dream a reality!

Come back to visit our blog tomorrow, as we will be diving into the details of our manufacturing process. Simply bookmark our blog or become our “fan” on facebook to stay tuned with the latest info. As always, check the archives for hundreds of fascinating articles on our blog here at Bluepoppy.com, and be sure to visit the TCMinfo online section of our website for over a thousand free journal articles and other goodies.