Will Yunnan's maca industry be eliminated this time?

Gazing at each other, reluctant to part, the bleak evening tide is calm. After speaking, we join hands again, and the moon rises bright over the islets.

— Wang Wei, "Two Untitled Poems"

Lead writer: Xiaoming (personal WeChat: yunnanshuwenning)

Recently, Shandong, Hunan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places launched special rectification campaigns to crack down on illegal additives and illegal claims in three categories of food: health foods, compounded wines, and maca products.

Maca products were specifically named, which for Yunnan's maca industry, already mired in a deep freeze, is nothing short of a catastrophe.

Special Rectification

This special rectification campaign originated from a document issued at the end of May by the General Office of the China Food and Drug Administration, titled "Notice on Carrying Out Special Governance of Illegal Additives and Illegal Claims in Three Categories of Food Including Health Foods [Shiyao Jianban Shijian San (2016) No. 68]."

The notice requires that the rectification focus on three categories of food: health foods, compounded wines (mainly compounded wines containing Chinese medicinal ingredients), and maca products. The governance content covers illegal addition of drugs and illegal claims of efficacy.

The issue of illegal efficacy claims is mainly manifested in product labels, instructions, giveaway brochures and other materials containing illegal claims of disease prevention or treatment functions, promoting health functions without obtaining a health food license, and in advertising, false or exaggerated claims of product efficacy and publishing health food advertisements without approval.

The illegally added drugs to be specifically inspected mainly include sibutramine, ephedrine and phenolphthalein, sildenafil, tadalafil, metformin hydrochloride, rosiglitazone maleate, pioglitazone hydrochloride, phenformin hydrochloride, glibenclamide, glipizide, lovastatin, amlodipine and nifedipine, among others.

Among the above drugs, some are weight-loss drugs, some are blood-sugar-lowering diabetes drugs, and some are cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease drugs. But "sildenafil" and "tadalafil" are very special: the former is the commonly known "Viagra," or "Viagra," and the latter is also known as "Cialis." Both are drugs for treating male erectile dysfunction.

The scope of this rectification will not be limited to the above provinces, but will be a large-scale nationwide campaign.

Maca products on an e-commerce platform

The Path of Maca

Shandong proposed that pressed candies, solid beverages, instant foods and other products made from maca as a raw material will be severely cracked down on. This has essentially covered all maca products.

Maca is native to Peru in South America and belongs to the same cruciferous family as radishes. In Peru, it is just an ordinary vegetable eaten by people and livestock.

In 2002, an enterprise in Lijiang introduced maca cultivation on a trial basis. The most successful was at the foot of Yulong Snow Mountain in Lijiang, at an altitude of about 3,500 m, where the geographical environment, climate, soil and other natural conditions are very similar to those of the Peruvian Andes. For many years afterward, maca continued to be tested and promoted in Lijiang, with its reputation mostly confined to the local area.

It was not until 2011 that things changed. In May of that year, the Ministry of Health approved "maca powder" as a "novel food." This move gave great encouragement to the government, enterprises and farmers, thus setting off a maca market boom.

In 2013, the Yunnan Provincial People's Government and the Lijiang Municipal People's Government designated maca as a key biological industry. Maca, which had previously been ignored by all, saw the market price of its dried fruit jump to several hundred yuan per kg, with the peak price of the highest-quality dried fruit once reaching over a thousand yuan per kg.

When the author entered the two characters "maca" into Yunnan's business registration information system, a total of 51 enterprises popped up, most of them established after 2012. But the number of Yunnan enterprises that do not have "maca" in their business name but actually deal in maca products is at least ten times that, possibly more than 500.

In addition to countless small and medium-sized enterprises and individuals, the maca industry also attracted the favor of giants. Besides local companies such as Yunnan Baiyao, major outside brands such as Moutai, Wuliangye, Luzhou Laojiao, Baiyunshan, Kangmei Pharmaceutical and Xiangxue Pharmaceutical also entered the maca industry, launching maca wine, maca pressed candies, beverages and other products.

Announcement of the former Ministry of Health approving maca powder as a novel food

"Plant Viagra"

The earliest domestic research on maca was a paper titled "Maca — A Health Food of Global Attention" published by Xiao Peigen, academician of the Pharmaceutical and Health Engineering Division of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. The paper pointed out that maca may have a good regulatory effect on helping people in a sub-health state recover their health, and has particularly good prospects in improving the endocrine system.

Experiments showed that maca has the effects of enhancing physical strength, reducing stress and enhancing sexual function. But this conclusion was only demonstrated in animal tests on male rats and no human clinical trials were conducted.

Although "novel food" is only food, not medicine or a health product, this did not stop merchants from hyping it. Sex, the topic the Chinese are least good at discussing openly but most enthusiastic about in private, became the industry's best packaging gimmick.

The most widely circulated saying is: "If a man eats it, a woman can't stand it; if a woman eats it, a man can't stand it; if both eat it, the bed can't stand it; if you plant it in the field, the field can't stand it." This joke was originally used by northerners to boast about Chinese yam, but shrewd maca merchants used it as a word-of-mouth marketing joke.

Some even fabricated a rumor that maca, as a national gift of Peru, was presented by its top leader to China's top leader.

So anyone who has heard of "maca" knows its title of "plant Viagra." In merchants' advertising, claimed functions include boosting immunity, fighting tumors, regulating the endocrine system, relieving prostate disease and resisting depression, among others.

Although maca's efficacy in improving sexual performance still needs research and confirmation, profit-seeking merchants had long thought of other ways to prove maca's efficacy. The simplest method was to add "Viagra powder," namely the aforementioned "sildenafil" or "tadalafil," to maca products.

If you open a search engine and enter "maca + Viagra powder," you can see more media reports, so we will not elaborate further here.

Fresh maca fruit

Illegal Addition

Last year, during law enforcement inspections organized by the China Food and Drug Administration across provincial food and drug regulatory departments, it was found that some health wine and compounded wine manufacturers had illegally added substances. At the end of July that year, the General Office of the China Food and Drug Administration issued the "Announcement on Illegal Addition by 51 Health Wine and Compounded Wine Enterprises in 69 Products."

The announcement stated: preliminary investigation found that a total of 51 enterprises had illegally added sildenafil (commonly known as the drug ingredient "Viagra") and other chemical substances to 69 kinds of health wine and compounded wine, and explicitly stated or implied functions such as aphrodisiac and sexual health care in product names, markings and labels; 27 products suspected of illegal addition of sildenafil were under investigation, involving 25 nominally involved enterprises; 8 products suspected of illegal addition of tadalafil, thioaildenafil, vardenafil, reddenafil and other chemical substances were under investigation, involving 7 nominally involved enterprises.

In addition to traditional infused wines such as deer penis wine, deer antler wine, cordyceps wine and snake penis wine, maca-type compounded wines were also a disaster area. Besides enterprises in Northeast China, Sichuan, Hunan and other places, Yunnan also had enterprises on the list.

In the China Food and Drug Administration's successive announcements on false advertising or food safety supervision spot checks, maca product enterprises also frequently appeared on the list.

Last year's announcement also required that all health wine and compounded wine manufacturers conduct self-inspections, and that local food and drug regulatory departments immediately organize special supervision and inspection of health wine and compounded wine production and operation.

This year's special rectification campaign has been upgraded again, expanding the scope to three major categories: health foods, compounded wines and maca products.

Dried yellow maca fruit

The Pain of Maca

Lijiang is China's largest maca production base, with 80 percent of China's total maca output coming from Lijiang.

For Lijiang, located in a high-cold mountainous area with a backward economy, maca is extremely compatible with the local natural environment, and its returns are quick, stable and fast, making it a rare cash crop for the area. The Lijiang municipal government regards maca as an important local industry and even wrote maca into government planning, with plans to build maca into a 100-billion-yuan industry by 2020.

According to data published by the Lijiang Municipal Biological Resources Development and Innovation Office, before 2011 the area planted with maca in Lijiang did not exceed 2,000 mu, in 2012 the planted area was less than 17,000 mu, in 2014 it reached 70,000 mu, and in 2015 it exceeded 140,000 mu, exceeding the annual planned area of 80,000 mu.

Nearby areas such as Zhaotong, Qujing and Liangshan also saw considerable planting areas. What is more, Gansu, **, Qinghai and Tibet also became important production areas.

The rapid expansion of planting area led to a surge in output, and further led to oversupply and a sharp drop in maca prices. In Kunming's vegetable markets, fresh fruit selling for more than ten or twenty-odd yuan per kg can be seen everywhere. In the main production area of Lijiang, the price of fresh maca fruit has fallen to just a few yuan per kg. Many farmers even let mature maca rot in the fields because sales revenue was not enough to cover harvesting costs.

Even so, maca's upstream growers and the government still pinned their hopes on downstream maca product enterprises, hoping that downstream expansion could ease the upstream oversupply.

However, the nationwide special rectification by the China Food and Drug Administration will undoubtedly eliminate a large number of downstream maca product enterprises and shatter that last bit of hope. Even if major brands have no illegal addition or illegal claims, downstream deep-processing industry demand for upstream primary products will inevitably decline sharply.

So the question is: will Yunnan's maca industry be destroyed by this?

Rights Statement:Original content of Yunnan Meicai Think Tank. All rights reserved. Violators will be prosecuted.

Lead writer: Xiaoming (WeChat: yunnanshuwenning)

Legal counsel: Lawyer Hu Wenlin of Dentons Law Offices (WeChat: ynhuwenlin)