This post series on botanical ingredient adulteration is inspired by the excellent work coming out of the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP) by the American Botanical Council (ABC), continuing today with:
➡️ Bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) extract, which is often held up as a gold-standard eye and vascular health ingredient.
Much of the global supply is wild‑harvested, expensive, and visually easy to mimic with other dark berries and colorants, which means the “bilberry” on a label is not always what it claims to be.
For companies, confirming identity is not optional; it’s a legal and ethical duty under cGMPs to verify that each incoming botanical is the right species, the right plant part, and meets agreed quality specs. Brands and manufacturers should be leaning on resources like the BAPP adulteration bulletins and implementing fit-for-purpose analytical methods, rather than relying on nonspecific tests that can miss plant-part adulteration.
Adulteration, in the regulatory sense, means a product is unsafe or of inferior quality because it fails to meet legal standards for purity, strength, or composition (including contamination).
Economic adulteration is emphasized in these posts: intentional substitution, dilution, or undeclared additions that misrepresent a botanical’s true identity or quality compared to what the label and consumer would reasonably expect. Accidental adulteration is also present in some species, like Bilberry.
To see the full downloadable PDF post, go to it on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kerry-hughes-941353_bilberry-adulterants-ugcPost-7468086057956265984-OU4i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAANEoEBzLdbgS9fjLoyZvrkZbXD8Nj5SFM
For more detailed information on adulterants in botanicals, see the BAPP publications, which are freely available on their website.