The Balanced Life, the Natural Food & Allied Health Magazine, May/June ’99 by Robert MacDonald

From the Seed to the Shelf

What is Bowen Island Botanicals? Bowen Island Botanicals produces high-quality, full spectrum tinctures from the best medicinal herbs. Both the herbs used and the final tinctures are regularly tested by the Herb Research Laboratory and the University of Saskatchewan’s Herb Research Program. Bowen Island Botanicals currently has five products on the market, Echinacea, Echinacea Complex, Echinacea/Goldenseal, St. John’s Wort and Ginkgo Biloba. As well, there are twelve other medicinal herbs currently in the growing or testing stages.

A look at one company’s dedication to their product

Sometimes it is difficult to put a finger on what drives us to do what we do. Not so in the case of Bowen Island Botanicals, a family-owned and operated medicinal herb business that grew out of their own experiences with medicinal herbs. John and Elaine McLeod’s daughters both developed food allergies and immune system disorders. It was their search for help that brought them to medicinal herbs and the problems with medicinal herb quality. (They quote a German study on Echinacea where 80% of the “Echinacea” was actually the non-medicinal Prairie Dock.) Out of their passion for their daughters grew a passion for medicinal herbs, and a desire to create the highest quality medicinal herbs products. Enter Bowen Island Botanicals. In an effort to maintain quality, the McLeods control all aspects of the manufacturing process, from seed to shelf, John is in charge of the first stages- the growing. He holds a diploma in agriculture from the University of Manitoba, but much of what he learned had to be discarded in order to learn how to grow Certified Organic herbs. Once the herbs have been grown (according to strict guidelines governing Certified Organic products), the plants are harvested and dried. Both the dryers and the harvesting equipment were designed and built by the McLeods- just another example of their hands-on approach.

Once the herbs are dried, Elaine’s expertise comes in to play identifying and evaluating the processes involved in growing and processing the herb’s. Her work in analyzing both the growing methods and in preparation techniques for the finished products is groundbreaking: despite the herb’s long history of medicinal uses, there currently is very little literature about growing and processing medicinal herbs. The McLeods work together with the University of Saskatchewan and the Herb Research Laboratory to test the quality of the products they manufacture. Once the medicinal herbs are dried, they are soaked in special grain alcohol, which absorbs the active ingredients. This is known as a full spectrum tincture. Tinctures work faster and more effectively than pills, because the grain alcohol has already “digested” the plant materials. This means the active ingredients are quickly and efficiently absorbed. (It is estimated that the body absorbs over 95% of liquid extracts.)

A full spectrum tincture is one that contains all of the active ingredients from the plant, not just a specific compound. Elaine believes this is the most effective use of the medicinal plants. “In many cases, we don’t know how the medicinal herb works, we only know that it does work.” By removing certain compounds- eliminating part of the spectrum you affect the relationship between both identified and unidentified components. “Often times what you look for in an herb to tell its potency is only a marker,” says Elaine. The more of a compound originally, the higher the quality, yet when you remove the compound, the medicinal qualities of the herb remain. Why? Nobody knows, yet. But perhaps the McLeod’s research will shed some light. After the tinctures are prepared, little remains but for the products to be bottled and shipped. All that has gone into making the tincture is distilled water, pure grain alcohol, and the herbs themselves which have not been exposed to chemical pesticides or herbicides. By maintaining such strict quality controls and such high standards, the McLeods are confident that the products bearing the Bowen Island Botanical label are the best they can be, because they’ve overseen every step of the production... from seed to shelf.