A Calgary company which promotes and markets Alberta elk velvet antler around the world is poised to horn in on the lucrative Asian traditional medicine industry.
And while elk velvet is already widely sold as a natural nutritional supplement and aphrodisiac, Elk Equities Inc. is now taking its restorative properties to the dogs – literally.
The company’s Qeva (Quality Elk Velvet Antler) capsules are undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials in Ontario to establish their efficacy in relieving osteoarthritis in pets. Once the tests are completed, says company president Robert Pek, Qeva will stampede to the Orient.
“This will be a breakthrough for us and industry,” he predicts. “Everybody understands arthritis. We’ll be able to take the information from our pet study, overlap it into our equine products, and then overlap it into the human products.”
Alberta’s elk farming industry is ripe for international expansion. Canada produces 100 tonnes of velvet antler each year from a stock of 100,000 breeding elk and about 1,400 domestic elk farms, mostly in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In this province, there are about 40,000 animals being raised on 550 elk farms, mainly in northern Alberta.
Yet Canada exports most of its elk velvet to Korea in frozen or raw form. “It’s so frustrating, because we have a huge Asian population in North America,” notes Pek.
“Like typical Canadians, we ship the raw product to Korea, they manufacture it, take all the huge margins and ship the finished product back to Asian communities in North America.”
Elk velvet antler has been used as a nutraceutical for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine, and proponents list regenerating benefits like arthritis relief, increased blood circulation and improved sexual health and vitality.
The “velvet” is somewhat of a misnomer, Pek says, as the fuzz on an elk’s antlers is a waste product.
An elk will start growing velvet at around the age of two, and the antler cartilage — which contains more than 40 active compounds like anti-inflammatories, growth hormones and trace minerals — can be “harvested” each year for several years.
“It’s the fastest growing living tissue in the world, up to an inch a day,” Pek marvels.
The cartilage is dried, the hair is scraped off and the antler is ground into a fine powder at the company’s Edmonton-area factory, and enclosed in a gelatin capsule with no other added ingredients.
His company, which went public last year, has evolved into a leading advocate for elk farming and elk velvet production in Western Canada.
“We’re working with the elk breeders to create awareness for their product, promote it and create new markets, and put western science behind it,” he says.
But as interest in holistic medicines for humans has grown, so has the competition – yet the natural “petraceutical” market for arthritic dogs and horses is still relatively unexplored.
Instead of simply shipping raw antlers into the volatile Asian markets where prices can fluctuate wildly, Pek says the company is now working to develop a strong domestic industry and export more processed product abroad.
He’s just returned from Asia, where he signed a letter of intent with a Japanese company that wants to market Qeva to 5,000 pet food stores in Japan, pending the completion of the clinical trials.
In Calgary, the capsules are on the shelves at Petland, and humans can buy the supplements at several local food and pharmacy stores.
After the clinical trials are complete, Pek expects to patent his product and establish a solid niche in the pet-care industry. By backing up thousands-year-old folklore with scientific research, he hopes to increase consumer acceptance of elk velvet for their personal health, and their pet’s well being.
“The whole focus of our company isn’t strictly a biotech, because we don’t want to be just a research company. We want to be a biotech/marketing company,” he says.
“We want to be able to take the research we put together and put some application to it, commercialize the research for the benefit of the industry, and certainly our shareholders.”
Web Watch:
www.qeva.com
