China's first standard for traditional Chinese medicinal materials e-commerce is about to be put into use

At the recent Traditional Chinese Medicinal Materials Planting Base Alliance Conference, it was learned that China's first e-commerce standard for traditional Chinese medicinal materials will be fully put into use within the year. From now on, consumers purchasing traditional Chinese medicinal materials through e-commerce platforms will no longer need to worry about quality issues.

As demand increases, in recent years the phenomenon of passing off inferior goods as superior has become very common for traditional medicinal materials such as saffron, cordyceps, and Fritillaria cirrhosa. Traditional Chinese medicinal materials have diversified specifications and must be graded according to characteristics such as shape, color, and odor, so ordinary consumers find it very difficult to distinguish superior from inferior. To solve these problems, the first batch of standards put into application this time includes 1,187 subdivided product specifications for 200 commonly used traditional Chinese medicinal material varieties, including cordyceps, Fritillaria cirrhosa, and Codonopsis pilosula.

Long Xingchao, director of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Information Center of the China Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine: “This standard has already been systematically formulated. First, you can see the full picture. Second, it also tells you the coefficient for each grade. What is the third? What fake medicinal materials roughly look like also has pictures, so we can make a complete comparison.”

According to statistics, the annual sales of China's traditional Chinese medicinal materials e-commerce platforms currently reach 20 billion yuan, but the lack of circulation standards has become the main bottleneck restricting the development of e-commerce for traditional Chinese medicinal materials. After this standard is introduced, traditional Chinese medicinal material products traded online will be graded by quality, realizing higher prices for higher quality.

According to predictions by relevant departments, by the end of 2016 China's e-commerce standard for traditional Chinese medicinal materials will cover more than 5,000 product specifications for 1,200 commonly used traditional Chinese medicinal material varieties.