Welcome to Alberta's Natural Sector Home Page

 
 
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Who we are

Alberta Agriculture and Forestry staff is focused on business coaching, program delivery, linking resources and providing information services to this growing natural sector.

What we do
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This page captures and links existing information on the Alberta and Canadian natural health ingredients, products and other functional foods industry. The industry encompasses various companies involved in the supply chain and in Canada represents approximately $16.4B in revenue from all sources.

You will notice that NHP is used for natural health products and FF is used for functional foods on many of the information sources.
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Health Canada definitions to consider for the NHP/FF sector include:

Functional Foods are similar in appearance to, or may be a conventional food, consumed as part of a usual diet, which is demonstrated to have a physiological benefit or to reduce the risk of chronic disease beyond basic nutritional functions.

“Bioactive” is a substance that is demonstrated or purported to have favorable effect on health. In the context of food, bioactive includes nutrients (e.g. Vitamins and minerals) and non-nutrients (e.g. Lycopene or live microbes) that may be inherent in or added to food.

Natural health products are products made from natural sources, sold in dosage form and are designed to maintain or promote health; to restore or correct human health function; or to diagnose, treat or prevent diseases. Examples include vitamins and minerals, herbal remedies, homeopathic medicines, traditional medicines such as Chinese medicine, probiotics and other products like amino acids and essential fatty acids.

Resources

Producers, processors and manufacturers and others in the natural health supply chain can click on the market place, the supply chain links, industry organizations and industry resources categories to link to various resources found on this homepage.
  • Market Place
  • Supply Chain Links
  • Industry Organizations
  • Industry Resources

If you would like to be added to the ARD directories on this site, please contact us and we will send you the form

  
 
 
 
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This document is maintained by Rita Splawinski.
This information published to the web on December 10, 2013.
Last Reviewed/Revised on May 25, 2017.