"Genuine Chinese medicine" no longer encounters pollution dilemma

"Good medicine, good medicine." This is not only a simple slogan, but also means quality and safety for Chinese herbal medicine enterprises in China In the view of many people in the industry, despite years of efforts, the problem of traditional Chinese medicine has not fundamentally improved, or even become more and more serious in some varieties "The curative effect of traditional Chinese medicine is directly determined by traditional Chinese medicine, while the quality of traditional Chinese medicine is determined by land, rain, temperature and other factors If you are worried about tomatoes being treated with hormones and leeks being treated with insecticides, why do you think that traditional Chinese medicine, which also grows in the soil and depends on the weather, is safe?" A well-known professor at Beijing University of traditional Chinese medicine, who asked not to be named, said in an interview with the first Financial Daily yesterday In autumn, from north to south, there are nearly one thousand kinds of Chinese herbal medicines growing in the field as economic crops in the range of cultivated land in China, which have entered their mature harvest period From the field harvest, rough processing, delivery to the drug dealers or to the nearby trading market, after another round of selection and packing, transportation to the pharmaceutical factory thousands of kilometers away, a kind of herbal medicine has just begun to realize its medicinal value "Chinese herbal medicines are processed by necessary processing technology to stimulate and preserve the maximum efficacy, and then they are made into different products and dosage forms according to different purposes But in the final analysis, the two most critical steps are: first, herbal medicines, second, processing The innate herbal factors account for a larger proportion of the ingredients." Said the professor And this is the key to make many old experts in traditional Chinese medicine worried From China Pharmaceutical (market, According to the data of the chamber of Commerce for health care products import and export, more than 60% of the Chinese medicine products rejected by the importing countries are due to "green barriers", and the total number of blocked food exports from China to the United States, Japan, the European Union, South Korea and Canada is 2298, including 85 blocked batches of plant-derived Chinese medicine, 79 blocked batches of special diet, 24 blocked batches of animal derived Chinese medicine, and the above three categories Products accounted for 8.1% of the total blocked food The main reasons are microbial pollution, heavy metal, pesticide / veterinary drug residues, chemical pollution, unqualified packaging and so on In fact, strict control of heavy metals and pesticide residues has become a top priority Compared with developed countries, China's control of heavy metals and pesticide residues in traditional Chinese medicine planting is relatively late, which makes it impossible for export enterprises to fundamentally monitor the heavy metals and pesticide residues of traditional Chinese medicine, and many enterprises have not yet mastered the foreign standard data on heavy metals and pesticide residues of botanical drugs, resulting in repeated setbacks in export According to the public information, since April 2006, Japan has decided to continue to implement the standards for agricultural residues of five kinds of Chinese herbal medicines, such as ginseng, and plans to reset the standards for pesticide residues of 15 kinds of Chinese herbal medicines, such as Glycyrrhiza price and Astragalus price Meanwhile, South Korea has also published the licensing standards and testing methods for heavy metals and agricultural residues of Chinese herbal medicines - in the context of the continuous improvement of import standards by major exporting countries of Chinese herbal medicines, The safety of traditional Chinese medicine cultivated by farmers in China is once again alarmed According to the investigation report on pesticide pollution of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) released by an NGO recently, through the sampling of 23 kinds and 65 samples of TCM sold in 9 chain pharmacies in 9 cities (including Hong Kong), including Tongrentang pharmacy of Beijing Tongrentang (market, consultation) Business Investment Group Co., Ltd and Yunnan Baiyao (market, There are 65 kinds of traditional Chinese medicine products purchased by drugstores such as inquiry pharmacy Co., Ltd and Hunan Jiuzhitang (market, inquiry) retail chain Co., Ltd the test results show that 48 samples are detected with pesticide residues, among which 26 samples are detected with 6 kinds of banned pesticide residues, including phorate, carbofuran, aldicarb and other highly toxic pesticides, accounting for 40% of the total sample size Due to the limited number of regulations on the maximum pesticide residue standard of Chinese herbal medicines in China, referring to the EU pesticide maximum residue standard, it is found that the pesticide residue in some samples exceeds the standard by tens or even hundreds of times, among which, the residue of thiophanate methyl detected in Sanqi price flower of Tongrentang (Beijing) is 51.6 mg / kg, 500 times higher than the standard "Chinese herbal medicine is the same as other crops under the chemical agriculture mode, and the prevention and control of diseases and insect pests rely heavily on the use of chemical pesticides, which is the main reason for pesticide residues in Chinese herbal medicine." The report said The problem of traditional Chinese medicine is not two days a day In order to prevent diseases and insect pests and increase the output of large-scale use of pesticides, resulting in pesticide and heavy metal residues in the land, decreased drug power and increased toxicity, some of the prescriptions that have been used for hundreds of years (by experience) fail to achieve curative effect To a large extent, it is the problem of the original medicinal link Said the professor What's more, it's not just ordinary Chinese herbal medicines In recent years, even the "genuine herbal medicines" representing the highest quality in traditional Chinese medicine have become more and more unstable in quality and decreased in potency "Some well-known veterans in clinical practice often encounter the situation that the curative effect of prescriptions is not as good as before, or even" not sure " He said Traditional Chinese medicine culture has always emphasized "genuine medicinal materials", that is, traditional Chinese medicinal materials with specific germplasm, production area or specific production technology and processing methods The naming formula of "place name + medicine name" genuine medicinal materials, such as Hangzhou Baiju, Sichuan fritillary mother price, Huaishan medicine, has become a recognized synonym for reliable quality, stable performance and exact efficacy "Like agricultural crops, traditional Chinese medicine planting is also a very fragile industry It is not only directly affected by the weather, but also depends on local water and soil resources," said the professor "The land area is shrinking, and the industrial waste water flows into the land, and the waste gas pollutes the air The waste residue is directly buried in the soil, destroying the foundation of traditional Chinese medicine How can the planted medicine be the same as before?" " In fact, the standard technology is backward Due to the growing problems of pesticide and heavy metal in traditional Chinese medicine, China drew lessons from the experience of international planting industry and implemented the gap in 2002 Through the certification of some production bases of traditional Chinese medicine, the use of agricultural medicine is strictly controlled to ensure the cultivation and supply of high-quality medicinal materials "The original intention is good, but it is far from the" Zero agricultural residues "that the state hopes to achieve, and the state has not fully reflected the encouragement and support of high-quality varieties in policy." North China gap planting center director told reporters The planting center is the second batch to join gap planting base in China "At that time, the idea was that this is the future development direction Early joining can not only ensure the output, but also improve the quality While supplying to oneself, it can also supply to other countries At that time, the policy promised that it would consider providing certain support in product pricing." Said the person in charge However, the subsequent situation did not fully meet his expectations Since the second half of 2006, the continuous drought has caused a large area of diseases and insect pests - "the pesticides are used less and cannot be controlled at all, and insects are crawling everywhere." He said And the part contracted to local farmers for planting is also suffering from poor income and severe reduction of production, so people gradually lost their enthusiasm In the description of gap by the State Food and drug administration, the regulation takes the international standard of "safety, effectiveness, stability and controllability" as the terminal standard, and stipulates the quality requirements of traditional Chinese medicine planting, harvesting, packaging, transportation and other links The strict standards for pesticide residues and heavy metal content are established, the planting scale and growth period of different Chinese herbal medicines are strictly limited, and the origin of Chinese herbal medicines is also stipulated to meet the national ecological standards, such as "the irrigation water of Chinese herbal medicines should meet the quality standards of farmland irrigation water", etc The purpose of GAP certification of traditional Chinese medicine is to protect the wild resources and ecological environment, adhere to the "maximum sustainable output" and realize the sustainable utilization of traditional Chinese medicine resources by using standardized management and quality monitoring methods "This policy has been in effect for 11 years, but in the past it was mainly to encourage Now it is necessary to enforce it." Said the experts Ren Dequan, former deputy director of the State Food and Drug Administration and chairman of the joint construction and Sharing Alliance of traditional Chinese medicine bases, introduced that nowadays, the implementation of gap for traditional Chinese medicine enterprises by the state is mainly based on encouragement, which is not compulsory In the future, we need to "support high-quality enterprises and achieve high quality and good price" For enterprises that do not meet the gap standard, even if the certification is passed, they should be eliminated resolutely In an interview with the media, Ren Dequan once revealed that, in the next step, the regulatory authorities should take responsibility for the production and circulation of banned pesticides, and block the possibility of their access to the production of traditional Chinese medicine from the source; encourage traditional Chinese medicine enterprises to connect with farmers, place orders according to the needs of enterprises, and control the safety of materials from the source; encourage large enterprises to establish the production base of traditional Chinese medicine, or build a joint venture Enjoy, form one or two source bases to stabilize the source of goods According to the import and export data of the first half of the year recently sent by China Chamber of Commerce for the import and export of health care products to this newspaper, in the first half of the year, the export of traditional Chinese medicine increased rapidly, with the export amount of US $1.491 billion, an increase of 22.49% year-on-year The increase was due to the substantial increase in the export of extracts and traditional Chinese medicine However, it is not difficult to find out that the domestic price of traditional Chinese medicine materials has been rising continuously in the past two years, mainly because the international customers, especially the Japanese and South Korean and ASEAN merchants, reduced the purchase volume last year, which led to the decrease of inventory in the first half of this year, increased the purchase volume, and stimulated the further increase of the price However, pesticide residues and heavy metals are still the biggest obstacles to the export and internationalization of traditional Chinese medicine The data shows that in terms of pesticide multi residue analysis technology, the US FDA multi residue detection method can detect more than 360 pesticides, the German method can detect 325 pesticides, and the Canadian multi residue detection method can detect 251 pesticides In contrast, although China can detect some highly toxic pesticides in traditional Chinese medicine, such as BHC, DDT, some organophosphorus and other 24 pesticide monomers, there are few pesticides that may be used in the process of planting traditional Chinese medicine In terms of the types of traditional Chinese medicine involved, there are less than one hundred kinds of traditional Chinese medicine for the research of harmful residues in China.