The CITES certificate for Hoodia

Considering the fact that there is a popular trend to lose weight nowadays, supplements and pills to lose weight are extremely popular these days. Most of the customers buying these products don’t know however what they are paying to buy and which institutions are regulating the flow of merchandise in the market.

While you might wonder why it is all that important to know, you need to be aware of the fact that the hoodia gordoni is available in only five locations on the globe. It is commonly found in South Africa, Namibia, Botswaana and in Zimbabwe as well; also, one could even find it in remote parts in North America, in Arizona as well as in California. Due to the big demand of the plant to be utilized in manufacturing products, the plant is now on the endangered species list. Various restrictions have been imposed since then and more measure are being devised and developed to protect the exploitation of this plant right before it vanishes for ever from the face of the earth. The CITES, which represents the convention regulating international trade regarding endangered species, has been one institution to try to regulate what happens with the fate of this plant worldwide.

The most important thing is to make sure that the Hoodia plant is still alive when the next generations will come, therefore to export and use hoodia gordoni from the South Africa, you would need to have special permit obtained from the South African government. This certificate allows you to exploit the harvests for the plant for about six months after which you willneed to apply for another permit to exploit the plant. Besides obtaining this special permission from the South African government, you also need to have the CITES certification with you so that you can exploit this plant.

If all the companies follow the rules and are not involved in scam acts, then the products that will be obtained from the plant will be genuine and ready to use by customers.

Make sure you read the labels carefully because sometimes, the company whose name is printed on the back of the product does not coincide with the one that is selling it. Because only a small number of companies are given permission to manufacture genuine, natural products, this means that there are a lot of scams on the market that need to be avoided. Hoodia is to be considered a supplement, not as a drug and thus, you need to ensure the products you are purchasing have been tested in the laboratory for high quality. For instance, say you are looking at the products which are sold by a certain company. They assert that the product contains five hundred milligrams per capsule of the Hoodia component; if you have done your research before, you could easily verify it with CITES certificate and see whether those selling the product were genuine in their intentions. If you find that the values are within the range, then that means the company has probably made the products from authorized shipments of Hoodia.