Medicinal plants

Draft legislative decree concerning rules on the cultivation, harvest and first-stage processing of medicinal plants, implementing Article 5 of Law No 154 of 28 July 2016

The scope of the proposed legislation concerns the cultivation, harvest and first-stage processing of medicinal plants.

In short, in order to restructure the medicinal plants sector, the rules for which are currently still listed in Law No 99 of 6 January 1931 on rules concerning the cultivation and harvest of and trade in medicinal plants, the decree introduces the following amendments within the aforementioned sector.

• Rules for the harvest of medicinal plants that grow wild on national territory, taking applicable national and European legislation into account;

• redress of the lack of data available from specific research, with efforts to improve statistical classifications, which are not currently fit for purpose;

• specific application of the ‘Sector-wide plan for the medicinal plant supply chain’, which shall be the strategic planning tool for identifying priority activities to improve conditions for the production and first-stage processing of medicinal plants. Said plan will encourage the development of an environmentally friendly supply chain, define forms of professional and interprofessional networks that can create conditions for agricultural business to make a profit and introduce the coordination of research within the sector;

• set-up of a ‘Market and economic observatory’ aimed at collecting and updating information obtained by monitoring the sector’s economic data;

• preparation, via a ministerial decree, of the ‘Registers of varieties of medicinal plant species’, in order to enhance the varietal characteristics of the reproductive or propagating material of each species;

• set-up of ‘Collective marks identifying medicinal plants produced in Italy’ aimed at certifying compliance with quality standards within the medicinal plant supply chain.