[inishindie]

Is everyone aware of this up and coming "Event"

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/europe-to-ban-hundreds-of-herbal-remedies-2171781.html

This is taken from The Plant Teacher There's a petition to sign on the site....

"Thanks to legislation that was first put in place six years ago, virtually all herbal medications and supplements will become illegal in the EU as of April, 2011.

Freedom of choice in medicine is being taken away. You and your loved ones will only have access to the treatments based on Pharmaceutical Drugs. No traditional remedies, no Chinese herbs, no Ayurvedic herbs, no medicinal herbs whatsoever. Chinese medicine practitioners will lose access to the majority of the herbs and medicines on which they rely. Consumers will NOT be able to buy any Chinese herbal products within the EU.

This legislation has of course been heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, who are the only ones who stand to gain by this legislation. There is not any evidence to prove that herbal medicine present a significant risk to the public under previous and present legislation, when policed properly.

The European Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products (THMPD) was first passed back in March of 2004. This legislation established a new set of rules and regulations for the use of herbal products that have been freely traded for hundreds of years.

According to InfoWars.com, "This directive requires that all herbal preparations must be put through the same kind of procedure as spam. It makes no difference whether a herb has been in common use for thousands of years. The costs for this are far higher than most manufacturers, other than Big Pharma, can bear, with estimates ranging from £80,000 to £120,000 per herb, and with each herb of a compound having to be treated separately."

This is a massive infringement of each person's ability to prevent and treat illness in ways that he or she sees fit. Cleverly cloaked as issues of "public safety" this directive, and similar laws that are being considered in the United States, are nothing more than Big Pharma's attempt to wipe out the competition."

[cooler]

Money, money, money that's all the the pharma companies and the governments care about. They don't give a crap about your health or well being, but will use it as a stick to beat you into buying their "Licenced" products.
Watch and see one of the most famous herbs namely cannabis become legal as a "licenced" product in the next few years. They will be charging the MS sufferers ten times more than it would cost them to grow the herb at home.
Makes me sick the whole lot of them, and destroys my faith in government.

[walltoall]

The EU is definitely a nuisance at times but we had a neighbour managed to get into right trouble last week growing herbs at home. We are a quiet community and most of us are gardeners of one sort or another. I'm into rhubarb potatoes and onions. Another guy is into roses. We even have one neighbour with the best crop of pissabeds in Essex.

But the guy who got into bother was into the extensive cultivation of a medicinal weed using hydrophonics and UV. He attracted the attention of the Essex Constabulary by way of his electricity provider who wondered what was wrong with the house meter which was registering zero levels of usage. They shared their concern with The Bill and maybe the EU for all we know. The meter was being bypassed .

Anyway, The Bill arrived in droves with fleets on nee-naws and a large van with "Serious Crime Investigation" writ on the side of it. It seems that they took umbrage at the fact that the whole house (and we are talking about a detached 4bed with two garages retailing for about £340,000 at the mo) was given over to the cultivation of cannabis for the local market. Other neighbours told us in hushed tones told us The Bill broke down the front door with a battering ram. Such excitement.

I've a high wall all around MY garden and I hope nobody blabs about the feverfew and yarrow I grow here and there or the foxgloves which are doing very nicely in the shade of the garage. I also use the budding leaves of my hawthorn for medicinal purposes and of course my little stand of garlic is coming along nicely. I think I better look again at the house plants which I thought were soaking up IKEA pollutants. Jeez! maybe they are on The List?

Bugger the EU if they want to interfere with my little medicinal exercises with homegrown digitalis etc. I don't interfere with their wastage shovelling horse manure back and forth between Strasbourg and Brussells.

God with the 70s when my younger bro. (B.Ag Hons and just back from 2years in Zambia with Gorta), commandeered the family glasshouse for two years and grew a shed load of gange which I think met the basic and further needs of his section of Dept Ag for the duration. He retired last year on full pinshin.

wasn't it well we had not yet joined the EEC? Hawh?

[medieval knievel]

[inishindie]

The Pharm companies/govts are getting the public to "self police" themselves by convincing them that home grown herbs are a danger in some way......Mass manipulation...There will be a big queue for microchipping next.....

"Europe's nations should be guided towards the super state without their peoples knowing what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation." Jean Monnet

"To Achieve World Government it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism their loyalty to family traditions and national identification" Brock Chisholm - Director of the World Health Organization

" A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." Ian Williams Goddard

"The fact is that 'political correctness' is all about creating uniformity. Individualism is one of the biggest obstacles in the way of the New World Order. They want a public that is predictable and conditioned to do as it's told without asking questions."Consipriality

[Marigold]

Hi there,

if anyone is wants to, here's a link to a petition website regarding the EU ban on herbs:
[url]http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_herbal_medicine_ban/97.php?cl_tta_sign=491bdfa64f4f50e8e445a5ef3150d476[/url]

There are over 650,000 signatures on this site. An alternative, larger one is www.savenaturalhealth.eu.

Each country can decide if a herb is food or medicine. But then how do you do that? Cabbage or broccoli can help guard against lung cancer. Broad beans contain some amounts of l-dopa, used in the treatment of Parkinsons. Usually, food is good for you and helps keep you healthy and you don't even notice.

The idea that food is separate to medicine is a recent idea, concurrent to burgers and obesity. This is an age where medicine is supposed to cure you of food.
Thanks

[walltoall]

Marigold,

Than you for providing something positive to allow me to do something constructive about the EU herb legislation. I followed the website you gave and di the decent thing.

BTW you might like this EU stupidity story.

Are carrots vegetables or fruit?

Carrot cake is a national dish of one of the countries which joined the EEC later than Ireland. I think it was Portugal but it does not matter. The EU had previously defined what "CAKE" is and had decreed that it includes 'fruit'. At the 11th hour of the application it was discovered that the new country would have to comply with EU from the moment it joined and the carrot cake was an issue. So the EU lawmakers dreamed up a dinky solution. They held a special session and defined carrot as a fruit. From that day on the word "fruitcake" made sense to me for the first time.

Let's hope Ireland has the good sense to define all herbs previously used in medicine as 'food'. It won't even need a referendum.

Just so long as they don't make us eat all of them.

Did you ever taste plaintain?

[medieval knievel]

i don't think they are saying that 'from now on, the EU will consider carrots to be fruit and all citizens must comply'.
i suspect all it is it that for the purposes of determining what a cake is, they're happy that carrot complies with the ingredients.
i don't think carrot is considered as a fruit in any other circumstances.

[Sive]

I think the whole carrot nonsense stems from some country using carrots in a traditional jam/preserve....and since jams are meant to be made from fruit, it seemed the logical thing for some bureaucrat to redesignate a carrot as a fruit. Just a bit mad.....
There's a lot to be said for common sense, something we're in danger of losing totally one day.......

[medieval knievel]

it doesn't mean the EU regards carrots as a fruit in general, though.
don't forget that there can be a lot of money riding on how these things are defined legally.

one example of how seemingly trivial detail can be important - years ago, the US government exempted foreign fruit-plants from import duty, i assume to assist with helping fruit farmers establish orchards and the like.
however, the official who drafted the law mistyped the phrase, putting in 'foreign fruit, plants' - which exempted all foreign fruit and foreign plants from import duty.

by the time the mistake was rectified, it had cost them millions in lost duty.

[tippben]

Just planted out my Papaver somniferum. Waiting for the Gards to show up....

[inishindie]

Not much in the papers about the ban. It seems that there are no restrictions on growing your own herbs, bit of a distraction that point....It's aimed at companies who have been selling non tested herbal products ....here are a few thoughts.....

http://corkskeptics.org/2011/05/05/herbal-medicines-avaaz-have-got-it-dead-wrong/

http://irishwishesarespecial.blogspot.com/2011/05/herbal-ban.html

http://www.imb.ie/EN/Human-Medicines/Human-Medicines/Traditional-Herbal-Medicines-Registration-Scheme.aspx