Reply To: General questions
Hi Brianna,
I’m going to pick up where Benna left off, I also saw some other students provide great information on Facebook about the liquor license piece to consider. So, to sell tinctures, the legalities are different depending on:
1) What information (claims) are on your labels
2) Where you plan to sell your tinctures
A good place to start is the herbal business course that’s part of your program. In this, Seraphina outlines labelling requirements and touches on selling products, getting insurance, etc. If you’re not at that part of your program yet, feel free to jump ahead!
When making herbal products for public sale, unless they are licensed, you cannot make any health claims about them. If you are to make claims, this categorizes your products as Natural Health Products which would require them to be licensed with Natural Health Product (NHP) numbers. To get NHPs for your products, your production site and manufacturing process would be evaluated and health claims made have to be backed up by clinical trials, along with other requirements. Apologies if you’ve already come across this information in your research. If not, learn more about NHPs here.
Say you made a ginger tincture and your label simply said, Ginger (Zingiber officinale) tincture, and listed the other basics (ingredients, when it was made, your contact information, etc.), this wouldn’t be considered a health product because there’s been no claim about what taking this tincture would do for the body.
As you will see in the link, you can sell tinctures/other health products without an NHP if they are part of a consultation. There is no set time for how long this consultation will be. Some herbalists who sell products at farmers’ markets will speak to each customer buying their products and technically, this counts.
If you’d like to continue this conversation, can you please let me know where/how you would like to sell your tinctures and, which kind of formulations do you have in mind? You mentioned apply for a homeopathic number – is that what you’re planning to make?
There is no clear and easy answer for this but Benna and I are happy to help you to figure this out!