COMPLEMENTARY medicines (CMs) are often tagged with the descriptor "natural," "naturally derived" or "sourced from nature" implying safety claims, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) states.
Accordingly the TGA has posted on its website an addition to its documents guiding consumers and advertisers around therapeutic goods advertising.
Much of the material on this page results from the TGA's public consultation in 2018 on guidelines to support the advertising code (PD 10 Aug 2018).
The objective of the new page is to ensure "'natural' claims are not misleading".
"While it is ultimately the responsibility of the advertiser to ensure advertising claims are not misleading, a guideline for industry and consumers is useful to clarify the TGA's interpretation of the meaning of "natural" in the context of therapeutic goods, including how the claim will be assessed in compliance reviews."
Because no definition of the term "natural" is ever given on labelling, the use of the term could be misleading unless there is clarity around the concept.
The TGA draws the distinction between "natural" and its antonym "synthetic" based on the manufacturing steps involved in its creation.
"Minimal processing" can include freezing, drying, filtering, grinding, powdering, fermentation, boiling and primary distilling, solvent extraction, concentration or fractionation, the TGA says.
If a product has undergone any chemical conversion or modification into say, a derivative or salt form, it is then to be described as "synthetic" and cannot be labelled "natural".
In other words the final product cannot be a new chemical entity, only having undergone physical, not chemical, changes.
The TGA also referenced companies whose names include the concept of natural, eg., Nature's Way, Flordis Natural Medicines, Eagle Natural Health, and many more, explaining that it recognises the term "natural" within a trading name "would not by itself, automatically lead consumers to a view that all therapeutic goods marketed by that company are claiming to be 'natural'".
See the full story at tga.gov.au.
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