According to recent European Union legislation, products marketed
as “food supplements” do not have therapeutic purposes but
can exert positive effects on the health by assuring that certain
nutrients and other substances with a nutritional or physiological
effect are consumed with the diet (Directive, 2002/46/EC). Herbal
food supplements contain plant “drugs” that must satisfy requisites
of safety, i.e. absence of biological and chemical contaminants
(parasites, pesticides, heavy metals, mycotoxins, pathogenic
microbes), purity, i.e. absence of other plants or plant parts besides
those declared, a minimum concentration of active principles and
the absence of hazardous effects when combined together. Safe
botanical supplements result from the application of good practices
both at agricultural andmanufacturing levels.