By Cai Wenjun | October 23, 2014, Thursday

　　Traditional Chinese medicines need to have strict standards that will be recognized internationally, experts said at the International Symposium on the Chemistry of Natural Products in Shanghai yesterday, World Traditional Medicine Day.

　　No TCM medicine is recognized in either the United States or Europe because of the complexity, uncertainty of effective ingredients, unknown mechanism and lack of a mature quality control system, experts said.

　　They added it is important to transfer TCM from an experience-based medicine to an evidence-based medicine.

　　"Quality control, safety, efficacy and mechanism are the key for industrialization and internationalization of TCM,” said Guo De’an from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica. “The China Food and Drug Administration started to regulate and standardize TCM planting, processing and pushing new TCM drug development. We must build a TCM standard recognized by the international field.”

　　There are 12,807 TCM species recognized in China, including 11,146 herbs, 1,581 animal-derived items and 80 minerals.