Not all flaxseed is created equal!

First, Flaxseed is not grown everywhere.  In the USA, flaxseed is only grown in North Dakota, and to a far lesser degree, Minnesota. In some of these regions, the cooler growing temperatures, longer daylight hours, and (up to) nine feet of top soil is a boon to flaxseed growers.

Even within this relatively small area, there can be significant differences in the flaxseed grown.  Like other plants, either too much rain or not enough can adversely affect the end product.  Some large growers may mix their own harvest in with flaxseed grown on other farms.  This is a fairly common practice as consumer demands may call for more product than the individual farmer/manufacturer can produce in a single season.  

A good practice to adhere to is to run a chemical analysis on each of these (outside) batches before this product is dumped into the primary hopper.  Also, it is important to sort out misshapen and immature seeds as these do not necessarily have the same consistency, nutritional value, or lignan potency as plump, fully ripened mature seeds.

Unlike some other flax hull lignan products, those found in Fem-Flax® are rigorously tested to insure consistent potency, batch after batch.

There are no government standards imposed that require this rigid a policy. As a matter of fact, it is up to the individual grower/manufacturer to implement these types of criteria.

We are not faulting growers who may not go the extra mile.  Admittedly, some growers/manufacturers may be focused on flaxseed grown primarily for livestock consumption, or who may also coinsidentially support several other products earmarked for human consumption. Sometimes, there may not be a lot of difference between these products.

Then there are the specialty growers wo have an interest in growing and manufacturing a premium product.  Fem-Flax is produced using only the most mature, plump, robust, and potent seeds available in the USA.

While it may take additional production time and effort, each batch is carefully sorted to remove weak, misshapen and immature seeds.  The percentage of moisture content to overall weight is also carefully monitored.

In addition to these processes which affect the whole seed, a special cold-milling process is used to carefully separate and extract Fem-Flax flax hulls from the seed, resulting in rendering a final (flax hull lignan) product that is 99.9% pure and contains upward to 10% flax hull lignans, by weight.

If 10% does not immediately sound like a high number, it should be considered that flaxseed, in whole ground form, only contains a lignan count of between .8% and 1.2%.

Due to the fact that Fem-Flax is refined from a naturally occuring plant source, and is not chemically formulated, it becomes very important that each batch is labritory tested to insure consistent viability and potency (high lignan count).