Raw Materials Determine Quality
The quality and efficacy of a chaga mushroom extract powder product are determined more than 90% by the quality of its raw materials. This is because chaga mushroom extract powder is a product made using only 100% chaga mushroom as its raw material. No matter how outstanding the manufacturing technology one possesses, a good product can never be made from poor raw materials.
Ohkinam Chaga Mushroom understands this fundamental fact more deeply than anyone else. That is why we have invested a great deal of time and money in building a system to secure good raw materials first, in order to create the highest-quality chaga mushroom extract powder products.
This work is not directly visible to consumers, yet it is the most important foundational task that determines the true value of the finished product.
Real Wild Chaga Mushrooms of the Siberian Taiga
Ohkinam Chaga Mushroom uses only wild chaga mushrooms that have grown on their own for 15 to 20 years or longer in the forests of the Siberian taiga between 45 and 55 degrees north latitude. Some chaga companies claim to use only chaga mushrooms grown above 65 degrees north latitude. They do so in order to argue that chaga grown in colder places is of better quality.
However, Siberia above 65 degrees north latitude is tundra, where trees do not grow. Naturally, it is also a place with no birch trees, on which chaga mushrooms grow.
How Ohkinam Chaga Mushroom Sources Its Chaga Raw Materials
No official institution or organization controls chaga as a raw material. It is not a raw material that can be obtained through agricultural auctions or the like.
Hunters and herb gatherers in villages deep in the taiga forests harvest chaga mushrooms from the nearby woods. The harvested chaga is immediately broken into pieces about the size of an adult fist and undergoes a first drying at home. Local herb dealers then travel around the region collecting the chaga, give it a second drying at larger drying facilities, and thereby finish preparing it for use as a raw material.
We source our chaga raw materials through transactions with these local herb dealers. Siberia is an enormous region, while chaga production is relatively small, so the number of local dealers we need to trade with is quite large. Of course, having done this work for 20 years, things have become much easier these days. "Hey, Sergei, get me 200 kg of chaga by the last day of next month." That is often how business gets done.
The chaga collected from these various herb dealers goes through sorting at the raw material workshop of a pharmaceutical company in the city of Tomsk, Siberia. It is the task of picking out the chaga that will be used as raw material for products.
The Rigorous Sorting Process at the Tomsk Raw Material Workshop
In our company's case, we usually sort about 1 to 2 tons at a time. The sorting is done roughly three or four times a year: about two people from our company and about two from the local pharmaceutical company gather and work for about three or four days. The sorting criteria are as follows, and every step is carried out by hand.
1. Shape and appearance: Checking whether the overall shape of the sclerotium is intact and undamaged
2. Tissue density: Evaluating whether the internal tissue is firm and dense
3. Interior color: Judging the quality by the color and texture of the chaga's flesh
4. Drying condition: Inspecting whether it maintains an appropriate moisture content and has not deteriorated
5. Weight: Lifting it directly by hand to confirm that it feels solid and heavy
Through the sorting process, the chaga raw materials are divided into four groups. By Russian legal standards they are all Grade 1 chaga, but we sort them one more time and reclassify them according to quality.
The raw materials belonging to the last, fourth group are either discarded or resold at a low price, depending on their condition. The raw materials in the third group are sent to a specialized extraction plant about five hours away and used as the raw material for our company's 'Rosha Classic' products. And the raw materials in the first and second groups are used for our limited-edition and premium products.
Pre-Inspection Identical to That for Pharmaceutical Raw Materials
Even so, the materials do not go straight into the production process in this state. The process in which we manufacture our limited-edition and premium products is the pharmaceutical manufacturing process of the local pharmaceutical company. Accordingly, international-level pharmaceutical production management standards (GMP) are applied exactly as they are.
In other words, using advanced analytical equipment such as atomic absorption spectrometers, we thoroughly test the chromogenic complex values, various mineral elements, bacterial counts, heavy metal contamination, radioactivity, and so on. Only after this process has been fully completed does production finally begin as raw material for Ohkinam products.
Twenty Years of Effort Invisible to Consumers
These efforts to secure good chaga raw materials are something our company has carried out consistently for more than 20 years, but in truth they are barely visible to consumers. Securing raw materials in the remote depths of Siberia, post-harvest handling and transport, the rigorous sorting of raw materials, and testing on a par with that for pharmaceutical raw materials — all of these are processes the final consumer can hardly verify in person. And they are processes that ordinary trading or distribution companies neither perform nor could perform.
Yet it is precisely the uncompromising choices made within these invisible processes that add up to the 90% that determines the quality and efficacy of the finished product. We believe that these hidden efforts, which determine the true quality of chaga mushroom extract powder, are the real reason Ohkinam Chaga Mushroom has maintained unchanging trust in the domestic chaga market for more than 20 years.
We promise that, going forward as well, we will not neglect the long-standing effort through which we have put the simple proposition that "good products start with good raw materials" into practice with real systems, on-site management, and rigorous sorting standards.
- Kinam Oh, kinam_oh@hanmail.net
