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:
➡️ Black Cohosh (Acteae racemosa), which is used primarily for symptoms associated with menopause, including hot flashes, excessive sweating, sleep disturbances, and irritability.
Black Cohosh also has long been used as a traditional medicine for conditions such as colds, dyspepsia, rheumatoid arthritis, sciatica, snake bites, tinnitus, and whooping cough.
On the market, people may encounter Black Cohosh as whole, chopped, or powdered dry rhizome and root, as well as in extract forms made with aqueous ethanol or aqueous isopropanol.
These extracts may be sold as fluidextracts, hydroalcoholic liquid extracts, dry extracts dissolved or suspended in glycerin-water mixtures, or finished products such as tablets and capsules, with some dry extracts standardized to 2.5% triterpene glycosides. Bulk crude material is also sold as whole rhizome and roots, cut material, powdered material, and even in teabag form.
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 Black Cohosh.
For more detailed information on adulterants in botanicals, see the BAPP publications, which are freely available on their website. Visit the full downloadable PDF post on LinkedIn: