Occurrence, toxicity and regulation of the alkenylbenzene estragole in food and botanical drugs
Chairs: Prof. Dr. Jörg Fahrer, Kaiserslautern, Germany and Prof. Dr. Michael Heinrich, London, UK
February 23, 2026, 15:00 – 17:15 (CET), online
Estragole, a substance found in herbal medicinal products that form the core of phytotherapy, is in the focus of new regulatory measures. As an allylphenol, estragole belongs to a group of secondary plant compounds that are widespread in the plant kingdom and occur in numerous medicinal and aromatic plants, as well as in fruits and vegetables. Sources of exposure accordingly include food, food flavourings and foodsupplements, but also herbal medicinal products. Given that genotoxic effects have been described in toxicological models, some allylphenols have been subject to safety assessment and regulation in food and medicinal products already in the past.
Both the HMPC, which revised its earlier view on herbal medicinal products containing estragole in 2022, as the EFSA, which published a new draft scientific opinion in 2025, based their assessments on data existing so far, while in the meantime new scientific evidence has evolved, both by new toxicological studies increasingly substantiating the evidence for a thresholded effect of this compound, as by new exposure data for the general population. This symposium aims, based on lectures of leading researchers in the field, at integrating earlier assessments and new data, to allow a new, state of the art perspective on the risk profile of medicinal, aromatic and nutritional plants containing estragole.
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