Herbal Medicinal Preparations in Different Parts of the World

Abstract

In the past years the market of medicinal plants and plant-based products have been changed significantly. Globalisation is gaining strength even in medicinal plant industry since the former local medicinal plants are distributed worldwide through the Internet. National rules regarding medicinal plants and herbal medicinal preparations are also developed in a greatly differing way in certain countries. On the one hand, strict regulation of medicinal products results in unreasonable hurdles in, on the other hand, underregulation of certain product categories leads to the existence of products with dubious quality. Processed medicinal plant products are shifting from the category of medicines to the food sectors and according to the strengthening health conscious behaviour novel products categories are invented (functional foods, fortified foods, etc.). The aim of this chapter is to present an overview of the major product categories and of the regulation and market characteristics of certain countries.