Dr. DBA Narayana, chief scientific officer, Ayurvidye Trust said that the demand for Ayurvedic medicines will now see demanding for their use through food, drug, and partly cosmetic route. He also said that there were no clear regulations for using them through food route. Available routes were classical Ayurveda medicine or as a proprietary Ayurvedic medicine or adding them as ingredients in cosmetics for external applications.
The things will be changes as government notified about nutraceuticals regulation. Traditional herbal industry not spending funds in research or development or even generating specific data and sold products with just reference of Vaidyas. The growth of pure classical grantha preparations has been rather slow and the market suffers from authentic data.
There is also a lack of the investment for herbal growth or research work from the government sector. Only Central Scientific Industry Research (CSIR) labs, National Medicinal Plants Board, ICMR went on to support scientific work on herbs.
If we consider products in terms of safety and efficacy, then only 400 ingredients known in Ayurveda industry. For food ingredients, only permitted levels of these products can be used and above that particular levels, it can consider it under a medicinal category. With new regulations, the industry needs to use Ayurveda as per the regulation to seek drug licenses.
With the new regulation, the best thing that happened is permission to use botanicals to be used in its raw herb form to be processed into ingredients like extracts and distilled oils which are oleoresins.
Now with new innovations and demand, the growth of Ayurvedic products will be going to high and farmers will start to cultivating medicinal herbs under the supervision of companies that will source it.
