If you work in the herbal or natural medicine trade and you’ve seen something wrong, you can tell us here. You don’t need to give your name, and you don’t need proof.
What we want to hear about
Botanical products where what’s in the bottle doesn’t match the label. For example:
- Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) leaf sold as root. The label says root, the powder is mostly leaf, and leaf has a different chemistry and safety record.
- One species swapped for a cheaper or look-alike plant somewhere between harvest and packing.
- Pharmaceutical drugs added to a “herbal” product and left off the label.
- Contamination with heavy metals, pesticides or microbes.
- Test results that came back bad and were filed away while the batch shipped anyway.
- Products sold with claims or ingredients that sidestep the rules the TGA sets.
If it involves a botanical product and it worries you, send it. You don’t have to be sure.
How we protect you
- Encrypted on your own device. When you press send, your browser locks the report with the Institute’s public key before anything leaves your phone or computer. Only the Institute’s private key can open it. Our web server holds a block of scrambled text it has no way to read.
- No name needed. Every field about you is optional.
- No IP address, device details or time kept with your report. The stored record is the encrypted text and nothing else.
- Deleted from our server within minutes. The encrypted report is passed to a private encrypted mailbox and then wiped from the website.
- Kept quiet. We won’t share who you are with your employer, with the company you report or with the public. The only exception is if the law forces us to, and if that happens we’ll tell you where we lawfully can.
No online system can promise that nobody could ever work out who sent something. Your internet provider and the networks between you and us can see that you visited this site, though they can’t read the report. The steps below lower the risk a great deal.
Staying anonymous
- Use your own phone or computer. Avoid a work laptop or work phone, and stay off your employer’s Wi-Fi.
- For the most privacy, use Tor Browser, downloaded only from torproject.org. On iPhone, the Tor Project recommends Onion Browser. Set the security level to Standard or Safer so the encryption can run.
- Don’t sign in to email, social media or any other account during the same session.
- Leave out details only you would know, such as your shift, your desk or a conversation you were alone in.
- Send only what you need to show the problem.
- If you’ve signed a confidentiality agreement or NDA, tell us what happened in your own words and don’t send us company documents. A report to ASIC, or advice from a lawyer first, can give you legal protection that a report to us can’t. ASIC explains how on its whistleblowing page.
- After you send, you’ll get a case code. Write it down somewhere private. It’s how you can follow up without telling us who you are.
What happens after you report
We read it. If it involves a botanical product, our team looks at what’s been described, and where it helps we may test a product in our own lab.
If you tick the consent box, we may lodge the information with the TGA on your behalf as a report received from a member of the public, with your name and anything that could identify you removed. We can’t promise a particular outcome, and we don’t make findings about whether a company has broken the law. That’s for the regulator.
Make a confidential report
Thank you. Your report is with us.
It arrived encrypted and only the Institute can open it.
Your case code:
Write this down somewhere private. Quote it if you ever contact us about this report.
Please also tell the regulator
Some Australian laws protect whistleblowers, for example the Corporations Act when a report goes to ASIC, to certain people inside the company, or to a lawyer for advice. Whether those protections apply depends on who you report to, what the report is about and your circumstances. Sending it to us does not bring you under them, so we'd encourage you to report it yourself as well. If legal protection matters to you, speak to a lawyer first.
- For a herbal medicine, supplement or other therapeutic good, use the TGA's form to report a perceived breach or questionable practice. You can submit it without giving your name.
- If someone has been harmed by a product, report it as a safety problem or adverse event to the TGA as well.
- If the problem involves company misconduct such as hiding results from shareholders or false records, see ASIC's whistleblowing page for how to report and what protection you have.
If anyone is in danger, call 000. For a poisoning, call the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26.
How we handle personal information is set out in our Privacy Policy. Photographs: Withania somnifera by Agnieszka Kwiecień (Nova), CC BY-SA 4.0; dried herbal materials in sacks by Zmu’az4Z, CC BY 4.0; both via Wikimedia Commons.