Product Standards and Quality Control The last session of Day 1 centered on quality control issues of NHP. Loren Israelsen of the United Natural Product Alliance, USA, said that 70% of NHP in United States arrives from China. Most of these products display different Good Manufacturing Practices Certifications that is a cause of concern for the consumers. James Neal- Kababick of Flora Research Labs, USA, discussed how different herb suppliers unfairly add pharmaceuticals into their products to enhance their activity. Later, Steven Dentali of American Herbal Products Association, USA, reiterated the importance of proper identification of herbs and the use of marker compounds in standardiza- tion, while Mark Roman of Tampa Bay Analytical Research Inc., USA, discussed the different techniques available to perform such identification procedures. He pointed out the use of the initial organoleptic approach followed by microscopic identification, chemical profiling with thin-layer chromatography and HPLC and lastly genetic profiling. Ethnomedicine: From Indigenous Practices to Modern Day Use Day 2 started with a very inspiring talk from none other than Michael Balick of the Institute of Economic Botany, New York Botanical Garden, USA. Michael took off by defining the difference between ‘ethnobotany’ (rela- tionship of people, plants and culture) and ‘ethnomedi- cine’ (relationship of people, environment and healing). He then spoke of the deplorable situation in the world these days for global culture and their practices. He backed his claims with the facts that traditional knowl- edge of medicinal plants and healing practices are being threatened from generation to generation due to the prevalent processes of desertification and deforestation in the world. Out of the 6800 global languages, only 9% remain to be spoken while indigenous cultures are being destroyed by globalization and that there is height- ened hostility against indigenous people all over the world (28,29). He then referred to some of his works with indigenous people and their healing practices in Belize (30–32), Micronesia (33,34) and New York City (35,36). Roberta Lee of Beth-Israel Medical Centre, USA, a long time collaborator of Michael Balick, then spoke about her endeavors with medicinal plants and their constituents. Novel Analytical Approaches This session on Day 2 saw very advanced and useful talks summarizing some of the most advanced analytical techniques used and reported in the literature. The session started with a very interesting talk from Peter Hylands eCAM 2010;7(3) 393 of King’s College London, UK. Peter divided his talk in three main portions. Talking first about the controversy of whether or not to standardize NHP for maintaining their quality, he said it is not always possible to stan- dardize, particularly when the active compound in the plant is unknown. He proposed using other alternative techniques such as metabonomics (study of metabolic responses to drugs, environmental changes and diseases) and metabolomics (global analysis of metabolites, small molecules generated in the process of metabolism) apart from the commonly performed chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques. In the second part of his talk, Peter referred to his recent work in which his group has used metabonomics, along with high-resolution 1H NMR spectroscopy and chemometrics to evaluate the effect of chamomile tea intake on human biological responses (37). This allowed them to see prominent urinary excretion of particular tea constituents in the subjects during the 2 week post-treatment phase. In the last part of the talk, the speaker presented some more intriguing results related to bioinformatics and NHP. The speaker showed how a relationship has been proposed between the different herbal categories of traditional Chinese medicine and the type of phytochemical known to be present in that plant by studying distribution patterns of thousands of compounds from some couple of hundred Chinese herbs. The results clearly suggest significant association between phytochem- istry and the traditional language of Chinese medicine (38,39). Later, Susan Murch of University of British Columbia, Canada, reiterated the use of metabolomics and metabonomics in NHP research; James Harnly of Department of Agriculture, USA, touched upon plant sample fingerprinting and profiling and Albert Leung of Phyto-Technologies, USA, discussed the many aspects of quality control approaches for Chinese herbal medicines. Systemic Research, Nutrisciences and Molecular Medicine Later in Day 2, different sessions presented spe- cific findings of NHP particularly for cardiovascular health and diabetes. Multiple speakers from all across Canada presented their research data on potential of NHP to: reduce glycation index; modulate the endothelial function; produce antihyperlipidemia; produce antihyper- glycemia; inhibit formation of advanced glycation end- products; regulate insulin sensitivity and produce memory enhancing effects. Drug Development from NHP The last day of the conference was blessed with the presence of undoubtedly one of the most notable and popular figure in NHP research, Norman Farnsworth of