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December 01, 2003
Kava regains shelf space in Wales
Categories
Kava regains shelf space in Wales
28/11/2003 The kava industry is hoping to see other UK regions follow the move by the Wales National Assembly, which came into effect from the end of October, and will allow kava to go back on sale to consumers.
Kava was banned in the UK in December last year because it had been linked to cases of liver damage. It is also banned in several other European countries including Switzerland, Germany and France, as well as South Africa.
But in an attempt to fight the ban, which caused severe damage to the kava industry and the livelihood of suppliers in the Pacific islands, campaigners produced a report on the safety of the herb, taken to reduce stress and depression and to beat insomnia. The report by Berlin-based Phytopharm Consulting concluded that kava can be regarded as a safe and effective herbal medicinal product. It also found the measures taken by European health authorities to be inappropriate and unjustified.
The decision in Wales is the result of a court case brought by the UKs National Association of Health Food Stores against the UK Government. The NAHS, an organisation of 400 members, is also fighting the recent EU food supplement directive.
Dr Joerg Gruenwald, executive director of the International Kava Executive Committee (IKEC) said it is expected that the other UK regions will follow in the same way. Holland & Barrett, the UKs largest health store retailer, sold nearly 200,000 units of products containing kava in 2001, according to NAHS, while the annual UK market products containing the herb is estimated to have been worth up to £7.5 million.
The campaigners have submitted the safety assessment of the herbal to WHO and the EU member states and is currently preparing a broad information campaign to raise media attention of kava. Copyright - Unless otherwise stated all contents of this web site are © 2000/2003 NOVIS. All Rights Reserved.
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Editor:
dominique.patton@novisgroup.com
posted by Chris Gupta on Monday December 1 2003
updated on Saturday September 24 2005
URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2003/12/01/kava_regains_shelf_space_in_wales.htm
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Readers' Comments
Dear colleagues, dear friends
The International Kava Executive Committee (IKEC) is proud to announce a
major success in its continuous efforts to lift the kava bans in numerous of
countries worldwide. In the press release of the 29 November
(http://www.who.int/medicines/organization/par/edl/WAD_safety.doc) the World
Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that it had decided to re-evaluate kava.
At the end of August this year, we organized an international Kava
Stakeholder Meeting in Brussels, which was attended by two representatives
of the WHO. Within the framework of this meeting, we presented the major
findings of our Phytopharm report "In Depth Investigation on EU Member
States Market Restrictions on kava products"
(http://www.analyze-realize.com/Publications/Kava.en.html) and provided the
WHO representatives with the complete report, with the request to forward it
to the responsible division within the WHO. Now it looks as if our report
and the follow up activities have made an effect.
In the first meeting of the Advisory Committee on Safety of Medicinal
Products (20-22 October 2003, WHO, Geneva) the committee endorsed the
recommendation to obtain data / assessments from countries from which
kava-use associated adverse re-action reports are available, including
comprehensive literature reviews. According to further reports, the WHO has
involved two of their Pharmacovigilance Centers in the evaluation process,
one in Europe and one in the Pacific.
We see this as a great chance to get a new, comprehensive evaluation of
kava, which should include all the data and publications that been published
before and after kava was banned in several countries.
Meanwhile the IKEC is actively supplying all available information to the
press, stakeholders from the Pacific (e.g. Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu),
Europe and worldwide, as well as all other interested parties. Furthermore,
we are preparing a large information campaign, to be accompanied by several
actions to soon follow.
Please circulate this information to all interested parties and let us know
if we should add further addresses in our mailing list. Whenever you have
interesting news about kava, please send us a mail, we will then distribute
the information.
We keep you updated.
Best regards,
Joerg Gruenwald
Dr. Joerg Gruenwald
Executive Director
International Kava Executive Committee (IKEC)
Co: Phytopharm Consulting
Waldseeweg 6, 13467 Berlin/Germany
jgruenwald@analyze-realize.com
Tel: +49 30 4000 8111
Fax: +49 30 4000 8500
www.analyze-realize.com
Posted by: jgruenwald@phytopharm.org on December 4, 2003 08:01 AM
It would have been helpful if the regulators avoided the apparent knee-jerk reaction and hysteria toward the paucity, and dubious anecdotal claims of kava injury. The resultant de-banning in Wales is welcome news - see http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1000101.htm - and probably a start to re-introducing the effective and safe benefits of kava to Europe, Canada, and Singapore.
Perhaps a rational approach to kava is to view it on two levels: traditional (beverage) use, which is has been long established by the peoples of Oceania; and the extraction business, which has been associated with the uncertainty.
Probably if sufficient efforts were made towards understanding traditional and cultural knowledge of kava this regulatory mess would have been averted in the first place.
Aloha,
Jonathan
Hawaiian Kava Center, LLC
PO Box 26344
Honolulu HI 96825
http://hawaiiankava.com
http://kavaforum.org
http://kavafestival.org
Posted by: Ron on December 5, 2003 06:21 PM
It would have been helpful if the regulators avoided the apparent knee-jerk reaction and hysteria toward the paucity, and dubious anecdotal claims of kava injury. The resultant de-banning in Wales is welcome news - see http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1000101.htm - and probably a start to re-introducing the effective and safe benefits of kava to Europe, Canada, and Singapore.
Perhaps a rational approach to kava is to view it on two levels: traditional (beverage) use, which is has been long established by the peoples of Oceania; and the extraction business, which has been associated with the uncertainty.
Probably if sufficient efforts were made towards understanding traditional and cultural knowledge of kava this regulatory mess would have been averted in the first place.
Aloha,
Jonathan
Hawaiian Kava Center, LLC
PO Box 26344
Honolulu HI 96825
http://hawaiiankava.com
http://kavaforum.org
http://kavafestival.org
Posted by: Jonathan on December 6, 2003 09:18 PM
It would have been helpful if the regulators avoided the apparent knee-jerk reaction and hysteria toward the paucity, and dubious anecdotal claims of kava injury. The resultant de-banning in Wales is welcome news - see http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1000101.htm - and probably a start to re-introducing the effective and safe benefits of kava to Europe, Canada, and Singapore.
Perhaps a rational approach to kava is to view it on two levels: traditional (beverage) use, which is has been long established by the peoples of Oceania; and the extraction business, which has been associated with the uncertainty.
Probably if sufficient efforts were made towards understanding traditional and cultural knowledge of kava this regulatory mess would have been averted in the first place.
Aloha,
Jonathan
Hawaiian Kava Center, LLC
PO Box 26344
Honolulu HI 96825
http://hawaiiankava.com
http://kavaforum.org
http://kavafestival.org
Posted by: John Teale on May 14, 2004 09:58 PM
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