Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance (QA) is the term given to the whole business ethos and runs through everything everything we do - right down to our accountancy systems. Part of QA is Good Manufacturing Practise (cGMP), which is controlled by our Quality Management System, and has taken some 6 years to develop. This has a far wider remit than just Quality Control. Every action is controlled by SOPs giving absolute assurance of safety and quality.

Our company staff includes a professionally qualified medical herbalist, a plant scientist and a forensic scientist and chemist.

Quality from Seed to Bottle

Seeds are carefully selected from our own home saved harvest where possible; otherwise they are bought in from organic growers with years of experience. Our experienced and qualified growers study the rhythms of nature and apply this experience to sowing and harvesting dates. Herbs grown on the farm are almost all hand-harvested and always at the peak of their vibrancy.

To make our fresh extracts, the fresh herb is taken directly to the on-farm processing unit for shredding and immediate maceration in a water and organically certified sugar cane alcohol mix to avoid any losses of medicinal activity. No drying is involved, as experience has shown that fresh tinctures contain the widest range of synergistic ingredients. For more details on this, see also Why Biodynamics. Using our unique resolving percolation method, our herbs are made into fluid extracts and tincture within hours of harvest.

Cold ethanolic extracts have been used for generations by herbalists because they optimise the solution and conservation of plant contents without destroying them, as well as maximising their absorption in the body.

Recyclable Packaging

Our herbal products are dispensed in British-made ISO 9000 High Density PE bottles, which are the tried, tested and preferred choice by herbalists over many decades. Our packaging is all recyclable with tamper evident tops - find out more about packaging and recycling.

Quality Control

At various stages during the process, manufacturing and distribution of our products, samples are taken for validation and verification in our laboratory. These tests involve:

• Standard pharmacopoeia testing
• Product development
• Microscopy including stomata and stomatal index
• Foreign matter
• Analytical chromatography (planar or thin layer)
• Total and acid insoluble ash
• Loss on drying
• Ethanol soluble extractive and insoluble residues
• Water soluble extractive
• Alcohol estimation
• Swelling index
• Assembly of Full Certificates of Analysis

We also offer these laboratory services to other manufacturers, individuals and producers. For further information and enquiries please contact us.

New Techniques in Quality
Control of Herbal Medicines

A simple but relatively novel laboratory technique has been used to observe comples physico-chemical properties of whole medicinal plant extracts. The technique is called 'capillary dynamolysis', and has been used in the investigation of Biodynamic and organically grown food. The techniqueshows some promicein helping to control, and elucidate further, the complexity of herbal action.