A highly coveted medicinal fungus that only grows naturally on the heads of caterpillars living above 14,000 feet in the Himalaya mountains can also be found in Carson City. Small Business Exporter of the Year, John C. Holliday, is to thank for that.

While many may not understand the significance behind Holliday’s ability to grow this unique fungus from tissue cultures, it’s noteworthy to mention that many people around the world are enjoying health benefits from his Northern Nevada organically grown products.

About the Small Business Exporter of the Year

Holliday began his professional career as a mechanical engineer, spending some time building equipment for nuclear submarines in Hawaii. Cultivating mushrooms as a hobby since 1976, Holliday started Mushroom Maui in 1997. He sold the company to Aloha Medicinals in 2000 and became the head of research for the medicinal mushroom company with the move. Two years later, Holliday moved Aloha Medicinals to Santa Cruz, Calif., and then to Carson City 18 months ago.

“The business atmosphere is much more friendly here than in California,” he said. “The NNDA (Northern Nevada Development Authority) has been just a wonderful support…I can honestly say the best thing I ever did was move my business to Nevada.”

Holliday leaned on his mechanical engineering background to build the equipment necessary to replicate the growth environment of the high Himalayas so that his company could produce Cordyceps, the earlier-mentioned fungus known around the world for its immune system-enhancing and infection-fighting properties in humans and animals. Holliday sells raw Cordyceps and mushroom medicinals to more than 700 drug and supplement companies around the world, in addition to selling some under the Aloha Medicinals name.

Aloha Medicinals

immune assist 24/7, small business exporter of the yearThe company grows more than 75 percent of the world’s supply of Cordyceps and sells it and other medicinal mushroom products to more than 30 countries. With sales growing to $3.6 million in 2008, Holliday expects them to balloon to $50 million soon, with the completion of an agreement to sell the company’s Immune Assist 24/7™ product in Africa, where it has proven to be effective in helping HIV/AIDS sufferers.

Holliday, who is editor of the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in mycology from the Chinese scientific community for his research work on the medicinal effects of mushrooms; and he has lectured in more than 20 countries on the topic.

While other countries consider mushroom formulations and some of Aloha Medicinals’ supplements actual drugs, gaining that title in America is difficult. But Holliday doesn’t allow the inability to get his products approved as drugs in America to keep him from marketing effective products around the world.

“In the U.S., a drug must be able to be described down to a single molecule. But nature isn’t that simple. It isn’t a single active molecule but rather an entire suite of compounds (that makes mushrooms medicinally effective),” Holliday said. “Things are looked at as dietary supplements in this country, where in other countries … those same things may be regarded as a mainstream treatment.”

 

(Carson City, Nev., May 13, 2009) A Nevada company has developed a process that allows livestock producers to replace artificial antibiotic feed supplements with an organic compound made from mushrooms that produces healthier meat.

This would eliminate the need for antibiotic supplements which most health professionals have criticized for their role in accelerating the growth of drug-resistant bacteria. Beyond the health concerns, the European Union has banned the importation of meat from animals that are fed antibiotics.

Dr. John Holliday, Chief Scientific Officer of Aloha Medicinals, has been researching the antibiotic and antiviral compounds present in fungi for many years. His company has pioneered a process to mass produce cordyceps, a very rare mushroom that grows only in Tibet. Inside their facility in Carson City, the company now produces more cordyceps than are harvested in the wild in the entire world.

Penicillin, the first antibiotic and the model for all that came later, originates from fungi. Bacteria, viruses and fungi occupy the same link in the food chain. Because bacteria and viruses multiply faster, fungi have evolved to produce compounds that fight off these competitors in order to survive.

It was the isolation of one of these compounds that became Penicillin. And according to Holliday, that was where medicine took a wrong turn.

“When (Dr. Alexander) Fleming discovered Penicillin in 1928, science went down a very narrow path, trying to isolate single molecules that would have the active properties that we were looking for,” Holliday said. “If we look at using the whole, naturally occurring antibiotic instead of the single isolated molecule, we have better efficacy, lower costs and far less toxicity or side effects.”
Aloha Medicinals has proven that feeding livestock these mushroom compounds does a better job of fighting off diseases without the dangers posed by using artificially produced antibiotics and anti-viral drugs.

Holliday said they have run trials on more than 60,000 head of cattle.
And because these mushrooms are certified organic, meat produced using them would be eligible for export to Europe and other overseas markets.

“We are trying to come up with ways where we can combine the best of two systems, the happy cow in a grassy field, and the 100,000 cows in a feedlot,” Holliday said. “What we are doing is producing a healthier meat, certified organic, and it’s not sick.”

Aloha Medicinals was recently named the Small Business Exporter of the Year for Nevada by the Small Business Administration. The company also received the 2007 Governor’s Industry Appreciation Award, and the 2008 Nevada Excellence in International Business Award.

By Brian Sodoma

Learn About the Small Business Exporter of the Year