Wednesday, July 14, 2010

East Earth Trade Winds herb quality

In response to an inquiry about East Earth Trade Winds' herb quality:
East Earth Trade Winds has been in business since 1985 and have used the same suppliers all these years. While the quality of the herbs may vary over time, e.g., we used to get wild ganoderma, now we get cultivated ganoderma, we have never had a problem with misidentified herbs. Michel Czehatowski, the owner, is trained in herbal medicine and as part of his training he had to learn to identify 400 different Chinese herbs (herb identification was part of the California Licensing Exam in 1984 when he took and passed the California State Acupuncture licensing exam).
Shipments of herbs come into our store every week and the majority of herbs that we inventory rarely stay on our shelves for longer than a few weeks. We have a constant turnover. When herbs come in our store they are labeled with Chinese characters and botanical name. Herbs that we get are not sprayed as we occasionally will find bugs on them. We discard any herbs with bugs.
We buy herbs in one pound quantities and will repackage them in four or eight ounce bags. During the repackaging we always have to keep track of the correct herb.

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