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Just 21 percent of herbal supplement products tested by New York state were found to contain exactly what the labels said. Only 4 percent of such products at Walmart passed the test.

The Associated Press reports via The Guardian:

[New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s] office has sent letters to GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreen Co concerning supplements that either couldn’t be verified to contain the labeled substance or that contained ingredients not listed on the label. The products include echinacea, ginseng, St John’s wort, garlic, ginkgo biloba and saw palmetto.

… The investigation looked at six herbal supplements sold at stores across the state. Testing was performed by an expert in DNA barcoding technology, James Schulte II of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. The DNA tests were performed on three to four samples of each of the supplements purchased. Each sample was tested five times. Overall, 390 tests involving 78 samples were performed.

The testing revealed that all the retailers were selling a large percentage of supplements for which modern DNA barcode technology could not detect the labeled botanical substance, Schneiderman said.

Read more here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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