FOUNDER OF THE BODY SHOP SEES HEMP AS VIABLE KENTUCKY CROP

Jun. 25--PARIS, Ky.--The Body Shop met the tack shop yesterday on a Bourbon
County horse farm.

"This is what Kentucky should be," said Andy Graves, president of the
Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association. "Tobacco, horses..."

"And hemp," finished Anita Roddick, founder and co-chair of The Body Shop,
a $1.3 billion British-based international skin products company that uses
hemp in a handful of its most successful products.

Roddick and Graves visited Arthur Hancock's Stone Farm yesterday to witness
an experiment in the comforts hemp could bring to horses.

A stall on the Hancock farm was filled with hemp animal bedding made from
the hurds, the pulp of the stalk. The bedding, imported from Canada, costs
about $5 a bag, Graves said, but it lasts longer than straw or wood chips
and composts faster.

"It's three times more absorbent than cotton," he said.

The hurd bedding clumps together, somewhat like cat litter. And that could
speed up the cleaning of the stalls, Hancock said. Instead of taking all
morning to clean a barn, the manure and urine clumps could be removed in
minutes. At 16 barns every day, "that adds up over a year's time," he said.

Hancock plans to test it beginning today with one of his top yearlings --
McCreary, a colt who has the same sire as Bluegrass Stakes winner Menifee.

"Think about this for yearlings," Hancock said as he tested the cushioning
in the stall. "A lot more shock absorbing."

The co-op plans to bring some of the bedding to Darby Dan farm in Fayette
County and let managers at both farms share their thoughts on the product.

"This could be a good source of alternative bedding for us," said David
Switzer, executive director of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association --
especially if the cost is brought down by growing it here in Kentucky.

However, it is illegal to grow hemp as an industrial crop in the United
States. The Drug Enforcement Administration bans hemp because it is
considered legally the same as marijuana. At least four states have passed
laws allowing it to be grown if the DEA grants them permits.

Hancock wouldn't mind raising hemp along with horses and tobacco. "I think
it could be a good cash crop," he said. "As a Kentucky farmer, the only
thing I've been able to make money on is tobacco and horses."

Hemp is a market Roddick would like to help Kentucky farmers get into.

The Body Shop's philosophy of providing naturally based products in a way
that is both environmentally and economically sustainable has led to many
partnerships with growers' cooperatives.

Roddick offered her financial assistance to the Kentucky Hemp Growers
Cooperative Association in Kentucky. She paid for the newspaper and radio
ads publicizing the co-op's annual convention Saturday.

Her company began selling products incorporating hemp oil about 2 years
ago, and the seven or eight products now account for 10 percent of total
sales, Roddick said.

She buys 12 tons of organic hemp seed oil a year and imports it to the
United States.