The Senate Appropriations Committee's report accompanying the fiscal year 2014 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations spending bill urges the National Toxicology Program (NTP) to be "highly precise" when describing particular extracts of an herbal species to avoid confusion about different extracts from the same species.

The committee also encourages NTP to reinstate its practice of making transcripts and/or recordings of its public meetings available on its website.  

The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) recently disputed the results of a NTP report on the supposed carcinogenicity of ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) because the extract used in the study was not chemically similar to products sold for commercial use. AHPA has also requested NTP to maintain access to archived webcasts of meetings on its website.

The committee's exact language in the report regarding NTP reads:

"National Toxicology Program [NTP]. -- The Committee urges NTP to be highly precise when describing the results of its studies on particular extracts of an herbal species to avoid any possible confusion about the relevance of such studies to other extracts of the species. The Committee also encourages NTP to reinstate its practice of making available on its Web site a transcript and/or recording of its public meetings."