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 Milk Thistle.
➡️ Milk thistle (Silybum marianum), which is best known for its fruit extract, containing the flavonolignan complex called silymarin. Standardized milk thistle extracts have traditionally been used as supportive treatment for liver-related conditions, including acute or chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis associated with alcohol, drugs, or toxins; they have also been used for dyspeptic complaints and gallstones.
On the market, milk thistle appears in several forms. The most common medicinal format is a dried fruit (often referred to as a seed) extract standardized to silymarin, typically sold in capsules or tablets. Consumers can also find whole, pulverized, or powdered fruits in bulk, tea bags, capsules, and tablets, as well as traditional hydroalcoholic tinctures and liquid extracts.
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.
For more detailed information on adulterants in botanicals, see the BAPP publications, which are freely available on their website.
To see the full Downloadable PDF post, go to this link on LinkedIn: