Tim Meadows on:
How to ensure you're getting the right quality of Aloe Vera

You manufacture and/or market products that contain Aloe Vera, and you also purchase the raw ingredient in concentrate, powder or single strength form.  Your formulations contain a level of Aloe that is efficacious so you can have a quality product.  But how can you be sure that the material you are purchasing is (a) pure and (b) effective?

There is probably no other industry in the world quite like the aloe industry.  There are no official standards for purity or quality.  The FDA has authority only when it comes to the labeling and even then, the definition of what is pure aloe  is totally up to the
manufacturer/ marketer.  Although many products do contain the amount claimed, many more  only contain a minute percentage for label claims, but still call themselves "aloe based" products.  And even if a manufacturer has the highest principles, how are they to know if they are getting good quality aloe from their supplier?

Over the years, there have been many attempts by trade organizations and aloe suppliers to develop an analytical test that can verify an aloe product's purity.
The search for a chemical marker in the raw material is the easiest and most popular direction, but it has several pitfalls.  First, we are assuming that the identifying chemical in question is unique to aloe.  Second, we are assuming that no other chemicals or group of chemicals would be identified the same way.  Most importantly, does this chemical have any relevance to the aloe's biological efficacy?   Also  most of the analysis suggested is beyond the financial or technical abilities of small to medium sized companies.  To date there is no reliable method of analyzing aloe in the laboratory to determine purity and activity.

With this in mind, a non-governmental trade organization was formed by some of the aloe  raw material companies.  The International Aloe Science Council (IASC) was set up to give a certification to aloe suppliers so that the finished product manufacturers who purchased the aloe could be given assurance that the product would be pure and efficacious.

The certification is based on a combination of chemical tests and audits.  Chemical test are only partially reliable, and tell us nothing of the aloe's activity.  An audit would seem to be the best way to determine whether a company is supplying pure aloe.  However, the IASC audit consists only of verifying the harvesting and processing conditions.  Verifying the simple existence of a field and a processing plant is no guarantee that what is being sold is pure aloe.

After more than 20 years in the aloe vera industry, both as a supplier and a user, I am convinced that there is only one way a person can feel confident that they are receiving pure aloe and that is by conducting a material audit.  By this I mean tracing the path of actual solids from the harvest through the processing plant and out the door.  It should be a simple task to match up the amount of aloe solids harvested as a gel to the amount of aloe sold by the supplier.  The method would be the same as with an IRS audit where you must match up your spending with your reported income.  This procedure could also be used at the finished product stage.

This may sound too simple, but most of us would be very surprised at the results.  We would often find no correlation between the amount of aloe solids harvested and the finished raw material sold.  With this method one could be sure that the aloe supplier has harvested aloe from an actual field and that the amount of aloe harvested correlates to the amount of aloe sold.  For companies that simply repack aloe, the audit would extend back to their supplier as well.   The companies finances would remain confidential because all the auditor would be concerned with is the path of aloe solids.  This procedure has an advantage over a spot inspection in that it looks at the company's performance as a whole.

The other important point is the quality of the aloe.  Since the properties that are from the aloe are biological, how do we assess its activity relative to the freshly cut plant which we know is active and beneficial?  Nobody has the answer to this question, but what I look for is the way in which the aloe is harvested and processed. 

As with most natural materials we are not sure which compounds or combinations of compounds are responsible for aloe's performance.  It seems logical that the less processing the better.  Again, we are back to an actual audit or inspection of the aloe processor and farms.

An audit and/or inspection of every potential aloe supplier might be impractical, but an audit system such as described could be used to certify suppliers and assure them that the product is pure and can be accounted for from field to drum.