Ills of unregulated medicinal plant exports

ILLS OF UNREGULATED MEDICINAL PLANT EXPORTS

By Abraham Lama

LIMA, Feb 3 (IPS) - Peru's lack of a clear legal framework for exporting native medicinal plants deprives local indigenous communities of their ancestral rights and hampers development of the nation's pharmaceutical industry.

A recently passed law on the issue prohibits the export in bulk of the native pharmacopoeia's most important species, but unscrupulous vendors flaunt regulations by selling plants overseas with minimal or non-existent added-value.

Meanwhile, transnational pharmaceutical companies send researchers to the developing countries with the greatest bio-genetic diversity -- in the Americas, Africa and Asia -- to seek information on traditional curative plants, unknown to the industry in industrialised countries.

In some areas of the South where highly developed indigenous cultures have existed or still exist, such as Peru, ancestral wisdom includes knowledge of the healing properties of plant species - something the transnationals are anxious to exploit on a large scale.

These laboratories send doctors, sociologists and other experts to obtain information on native plants to determine whether they are candidates for mass production.

The foreign researchers trace the native communities' oral traditions, primarily through their 'shamans,' who are the living repositories of indigenous ancestral wisdom.

Until 1999, North American, European and Japanese labs could freely export Peruvian plant roots, stalks, fruits or leaves, unprocessed and in massive quantities.

But in July 1999, the Peruvian parliament drafted a law that bans the non-added value export of some of the botanical species with known healing properties, which had become the target of massive extraction by foreign laboratories.

The law covers the two best-known medicianl plants in Peru's indigenous pharmacopoeia: cat's claw and 'maca'; and legislators are considering expanding the norm to cover 'yacón' and 'para-para' as well.

Cat's claw is an Amazonian plant whose bark contains substances that boost the human immunological system.

'Maca' is a small plant that grows in the highest region's of the Peruvian Andes. Its bulb has great nutritional value and energising properties, recognised by the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) in the United States, which has included it in the diet of its astronauts.

The 'yacón,' a traditional sweetner for some native communities, also has medicinal properties, according to David Campos, of the National Agrarian University's Institute of Agro-Industrial Development.

'Consuming yacón aids the production of bifidobacteria, which inhibit the actions of some carcinogenic compounds. Yacón does not cure colon cancer, but it does prevent it,' affirmed Campos.

'It also prevents fat build-up, and with it, the accumulation of cholesterol, the principal cause of coronary diseases,' he concluded.

'Para-para,' from the Peruvian Amazon jungle, has aphrodisiac properties. 'It awakens the sexual appetite, stimulating the creation of spermatizoids in males and invigorating the ovaries in females,' according to doctor Manuel Fernández, president of the Traditional Medicine Research Centre in Peru.

Cat's claw is a clear example of the consequences of unregulated exploitation, a process that does not compensate the indigenous communities that discovered its healing properties, or provide economic benefits to the country of origin.

Cat's claw is used effectively in treating several types of cancer, and even AIDS. The plant has been exported in enormous quantities. Two European pharmaceutical labs patented the plant in their respective countries, granting them intellectual property rights.

In 1993, 200 kg of unprocessed cat's claw bark were exported to the United States. The volume jumped to 20,000 kg in 1994, and reached more than 800,000 kg in 1999.

Several Peruvian labs, one of them belonging to the Catholic University of Lima, had begun exporting processed cat's claw in pill form, but went bankrupt in 1998 because US companies began manufacturing the same thing and pushed them out of the market.

The lack of protections for the Peruvian pharmaceutical sector is not the only problem. Cat's claw is being over-exploited, reported the First Regional Conference on Traditional Medicine, held in Oct 1999 in Yarinacocha, located in Peru's central jungle.

Percy Hernández, head of the Medicinal Plant Consortium, charges that cat's claw faces extinction due to unregulated and depredatory extraction practices.

'We used to be able to obtain cat's claw in Huánuco, but it disappeared. So we started buying it in Tingo María, then in Auaytía and Pucallpa, but it is running out there, too, and now we are looking for it in Rioja and Contaman, 400 km from Huánuco,' said Hernández.

'The plantations are becoming extinct. The plans for planting two million seedlings of cat's claw have not worked. It was an investment project of 25 million dollars that the National Reforestation Institute was supposed to carry out,' he commented.

Vendor Iván Esteves, one of the presenters at the Yarinacocha meeting, pointed out that cat's claw 'is being sold at a loss,' because in the jungle a kilo is brings in two cents on the dollar, while in Lima the kilo sells for 28 cents.

'In Europe, a bottle of 100 capsules of 300 mg each is sold for 18 dollars. It's true that it has added value, but the export price should be between three and five dollars' per kilo, maintained Estevez.

Another consequence of the unregulated extraction and export of cat's claw is that its vendors have fallen from grace during the last two years because they cannot keep up with demand. They have also resorted to substituting it with varieties that have weaker healing properties.

Javier Reategui, president of the Agricultural Committee of the Exporters Association, emphasised that legal norms being prepared must include a rigourous quality control mechanism for traditional curative plants marketed overseas. (END/IPS/tra-so/al/mj/ld/00)