Legality of importing Nymphaea sp essential oil to Australia

[Alice]

I'm interested in ordering some nymphaea pure essential oils.

I asked about the legality of this in the lotus seed thread (see quote below) but got no response, so thought I might try again in the appropriate forum.

Is there any reason why it wouldn't be ok to import these to Aus? I can't see why it would be an issue, but just putting it out there anyway. Not exactly sure of the constituents, would hate to accidently bring something in that might contain trace amount of something not allowed.

I've done a search and see that a similar question was asked by hebs in '07, re lotus extracts. The implication as far as I can tell was that it's all good, but this was not stated explicitly. I'm aware that SAB has stocked extracts in the past so I assume that essential oils are ok too, but would like some opinions please. Perhaps the situation has changed in the last few years? Hopefully not.

A post Thelema made a few years back casts some doubt perhaps...

Torsten I think said something recently about blue lotus TECHNICALLY being illegal to import?

but I may have misinterpreted this given the thread was not about blue lotus as such...

And advice would be appreciated, many thanks.

[Torsten]

There are some constituent in some 'lotus' that may be restricted imports, but customs doesn't know about them so let's not tell them. This would be the only customs issue. The rest are all quarantine issues.

Extracts are regarded differrent to plain herb, which in turn is different to essential oils. There are generally no quarantine restrictions on any essential oils. however, Nymphaea essential oil is usually actually a lotus absolute, unless you are paying several hundred or possibly thousand dollars per ml. If you are paying about $40 to $200 per ml, then it is an absolute, which is actually treated as an extract by quarantine and hence probably has the same restrictions as plain herb.

[Alice]

Thanks Torsten.

Edited October 21, 2009 by Alice