The world’s most famous anthropologist just gave her blessing to the sweet leaf by co-developing a line of CBD products with a licensed cannabis company. Parts of the products’ proceeds will go toward rainforest conservation.
Jane Goodall, whose 60-year career in primatology and anthropology forever changed the way humans viewed their relationships to animals, recently partnered with Canada’s Neptune Wellness Solutions. With Goodall’s help, the company will launch a line of CBD-infused wellness products under the company’s Forest Remedies brand that will include hand sanitizers to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, the virus that causes COVID-19.
“The health of people, animals, and the environment are interconnected; this pandemic demonstrates this,” Goodall said in a press release. “However, if we all make ethical choices, every day, our collective power for change is great.”
Through the partnership, Neptune Wellness Solutions donated $25,000 to the Jane Goodall Institute. And additional 5 percent of all Forest Remedies sales will go toward the institute, which works to save endangered species from extinction and preserves fragile, life-sustaining ecosystems from industrial destruction.
Furthermore, Neptune Wellness donates portions of all Forest Remedies’ sales to One Tree Planted, a non-profit organization that plants trees in deforested regions of the Amazon rainforest.
The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s most important ecosystems. Besides supporting some of the most diverse wildlife populations on the planet, the Amazon also regulates Earth’s global temperatures and oxygen levels. But cattle ranching for beef and worldwide demand for paper products has led to the disappearance of massive swaths of the rainforest, at a rate of about 19.7 million acres per year.
To put that into perspective, hemp occupied 128,000 acres across the US last year. In other words, America’s fastest growing billion-dollar cash crop, acre for acre, only accounts for just a mere 0.6 percent of the same amount of Amazon rainforest that vanishes every single year.
“In light of COVID-19, we believe there will be a renewed focus and emphasis on personal self-care,” Neptune Wellness’s CEO, Michael Cammarata, said in a press release. “The purchasing decisions consumers make to support their health and wellness will have a lasting impact on the environment and our collective health and wellness.”
The relationship among COVID-19, animals both wild and domestic, and humans is both complicated and not well understood. Some activists have claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from humanity’s exploitation of animals. Recent case reports have also shown that the novel coronavirus can infect dogs, house cats, and even tigers, though there is no evidence that housepets infected with the virus can spread it to humans — yet.
As for CBD’s relationship to COVID-19, that’s still being investigated, too. Researchers in Canada and Israel are currently studying whether CBD can enhance other medications to control or even stop COVID-19 from killing human patients.
“I believe there is still a window of time to heal the planet before it is too late, but only if we each make the right choices every day,” Dr. Goodall added in the press release. “I believe that Neptune’s Forest Remedies brand is part of the solution and that is why I am proud to partner with Michael and Neptune to bring new Forest Remedies products to market.”