Business
Kava Producers Declare War
They're striking back to restore its good name
Pacific Islanders are preparing to strike back internationally for the restoration of the good name of kava, the traditional social and ceremonial drink, worth tens of millions of export dollars to them until it was hit by a European-inspired ban in late 2001. A mission of kava producers, exporters and officials will soon mount an expedition to Europe to prepare ground for an attack, including legal action on kava's detractors at World Trade Organisation level.
 |
|
|
Some kava dealers suspect the European ban, first applied by Germany, was instigated by multinational pharmaceutical companies anxious to protect their billion-dollar markets for branded tranquilliser drugs. Kava has a tranquillising impact for people suffering anxiety symptoms. In the 1990s European, Australia and American herbal medicinal companies built a huge business by manufacturing kava-based pills and other preparations and selling them as being a safer, cheaper alternative to such pharmaceutical heavyweights as Valium for treating anxiety, stress and restlessness.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
By 2000, exports of unprocessed kava by Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga and some other producers were hitting a total of at least US$100 million a year. Other estimates put the figure higher. Apart from the domestic kava drink market, in Fiji, it is worth at least US$35 million annually. In 1998 when the export figures peaked, kava was among the top-selling herbs in the United States and among the fastest growing herbs with a growth rate of 473% from 1997 to 1998.
In the South Pacific region, the annual production of kava was estimated at about US$200 million. In the United States kava was widespread in the nutraceutical and food supplement market. The pharmaceutical market was centred in Germany with an estimated 1.3 million users. Then disaster struck. Germany's Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical devices (BfArH) claimed it had received 76 cases of patients suffering liver damage attributed to kava.
In June last year, it banned kava and in the following months France, Britain, Canada, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of other European countries also banned it or issued caution. The United States Food and Drugs Administration asked medical practitioners to be cautious in recommending kava, but didn't ban it.
The collapse of the kava market was almost instantaneous. For the thousands of Pacific Islands growers whose main cash crop it had become, the consequences were catastrophic. One Vanuatu exporter with losses estimated at US$600,00 wrote that in the rural areas with no free education, medical services or social security, losses were "heartbreaking."
At the time of the bad news from Germany, the European Union funded a conference in Vanuatu at which producers of herbs from throughout the Pacific met to discuss the development of their industry. Kava, and the attack on it, was the dominant issue, and already skeptics were producing evidence that cast doubt on the integrity of the German condemnation and on some European manufacturers.
Dr Vincent Lebot, a French agricultural scientist, who after 20 years of research in Vanuatu on the kava plant can be ranked as the leading authority on it, said what pharmaceutical businesses were making was "like putting wine into a pill and calling it wine. It isn't". He predicted that what would be discovered was that some manufacturers were using cheap low grade kava cuttings and extracting kava's chemical constituents with strong solvents. "They don't know the cultural significance of the way kava should be drunk. The dry root is mixed with poisonous solvents to extract lactones and calling it kava. We knew this would happen."
Subsequent research and inquiries funded for the Pacific Islands by the European Union's Centre for Development of Enterprise has produced a long, detailed and damning (damning to kava detractors) report. Of the 76 cases cited by Germany, says the report by a German consultant, Dr Joerg Gruenwald, only four showed any evidence of the influence of kava and of these, three concerned patients who took two to three times the recommended doses.
Of the 76 cases, at least five were double or treble entries, 37 had almost no evidence to support them and the balance involved patients with a history of alcoholism, hepatitis and a range of other liver-damaging diseases. In the last 10 years German-speaking consumers have bought 250-million daily doses, equating, based on those four cases, to a rate of 0.0125 for one million daily doses, the report says.
The consultant could find no convincing research evidence that the German federal institute could produce to support its devastating blanket, although the report contains plenty of scientific findings in support of kava's usefulness as an effective and safe tranquilliser.
The German regulatory authority had "obviously not carefully reviewed the case reports and misinterpreted available data", and had "omitted significant parts of the case information." Scientists from the British university of Central Lancashire and Exeter had commented that the ban was "completely unjustified" and that the adverse effects were "in general mild and reversible."
Dr P.A. Cox, director of Hawaii's National Tropical Garden commented: "The indigenous people of the Pacific have used kava longer than anyone in Europe and if there is a liver threat then they should be suffering from it. I have never heard of a single case of liver toxicity caused by kava in nearly three decades of familiarity with it."
A Pacific Islands delegation will soon travel to Europe to begin a campaign to persuade European medical regulatory bodies to either prove their attack on kava to the hilt or restore the green light they previously gave it. Strategy will probably begin with enlisting the World Health Organisation
(WHO) to commission an independent scientific evaluation of kava. If the WHO finding is positive, the Pacific Islands will be well positioned to restore kava's credibility through the World Trade Organisation and ask for legal advice and support in WTO dispute settlement proceedings. Simultaneously, a strong, internationally coordinated, public relations campaign would be launched to publicise the kava "tragedy", as the EU report terms it.
"All these actions by WHO, WTO, ACP member states and the public should finally result in the positive re-evaluation of kava by European health authorities leading to the rebuttal of the worldwide kava bans and the restoring of the financially-stricken kava producers and traders in the South Pacific islands," the report says.
