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USP Establishes New Expert Committee on Botanicals

The United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) has established a new Committee of Experts on Dietary Supplements Botanicals. Consistent with USPs commitment since 1995, the committee will draft standards monographs for the most popular herbs sold as dietary supplements in the U.S. market. To date, USP has published 15 standards monographs for herbal raw materials and 10 for finished dosage forms.

The committee contains several internationally respected herb experts and two technical experts from the herb industry. The chairman is Prof. Paul Schiff Jr. of the University of Pittsburgh; vice-chair is Paul Kucera, Senior Director of Global Analytical development, Wyeth Ayerst Division of American Home Products; Prof. Norman Farnsworth, University of Illinois at Chicago; Prof. Dr. Otto Sticher, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich; Yuan-yuan Chiu, Director, Office of New Drug Chemistry, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA, Rockville, MD; Dennis Gorecki, Dean and Professor, University of Saskatchewan, Canada; Samuel Page, Ph.D., Scientific Director FDA/Joint Institute of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN), Washington, D.C.; William Popin, Director, Quality Assurance, Twinlab Utah Division, American Fork, Utah; Farouz Ertl, D.V.M., Vice President, Technical and Scientific Affairs, Botanical International/Hauser, Long Beach, CA.

Mark Blumenthal, ABC