The Dark Side of Tea October 2015
EDITOR'S NOTE
Nicole Martin
This issue represents many things. It is the fourth issue, meaning that it has been a full year since I've started this new en devour. It's been a lot of work but the amount of support that I've received from readers has been incredible. So many tea industry friends have generously shared their words and knowledge as well. Remember in the last issue when I told you all that your numbers have grown to more than 500? There are now more than 630 tea lovers receiving Tea for Me Please Quarterly. Amazing! All of the past issues have focused on specific types of tea such as puerh or matcha. This time around a reader (thank you, Samantha!) asked me to tackle a very difficult topic. Sadly, our beloved leaf does have a dark side. Although I wanted to discuss these important issues, I wanted to make sure that I kept things educational without being completely doom and gloom. I just hope that I have done these issues some justice. As always, I'd love to hear your questions, thoughts, feedback and ideas. What would you like to see in the next issues? Please feel free to shoot me an email at nicole@teaformeplease.com. My inbox is always open!
THE ORGANIC TRAP BY NICHOLAS LOZITO MISTY PEAK TEAS
Mister Bin is in the distant mountains of China taking over his parent’s tea business and is learning the business first-hand. His closest friend from school, Mr. Gao, took over his family business just last year and is already facing some real challenges when trying to expand outside of their country. In industries all over the world, farmers are faced with a difficult decision: do they want to continue producing in a way that they are comfortable with, or do they want to switch their production over to organic, which often takes years. This tough question is made tougher by the demands and changes of the consumer, who, just a dozen years ago, would likely not have cared if their tea or rice or potatoes were organic or not. In my own business, Misty Peak Teas, I started to expand and set my sights on grocery and natural food stores. Going into a natural food store without the stamp of organic on the box is like trying to sell a Pu’er tea that was made in Thailand, it is only going to be an uphill battle. With that in mind, I started to google “USDA Organic Certification”, and found that the USDA is not necessarily an organization that goes out and certifies something as organic; they do not go to your potato farm in Idaho and stamp papers for you. What they do is trust designated certifiers within your farm’s own area to do the inspection, and if that organization meets the guidelines of the USDA, then you are now USDA Certified Organic.
An interesting law of the FDA is that packaging can not use the word organic on the front of the box if it is not certified organic, but the word can be used all over the rest of the box with little limitation. The same goes for fair trade. How beautiful it would be if there was a law for the word “tea� and how it was used. Artichoke or even Yerba Mate put into a cup of hot water should not be allowed to be called tea(a product of Camellia Sinensis); tea is something that is still working towards being respected fully in our culture. For tea farms thousands of miles away, there are agents in those countries who are able to go to the farm, for about $5,000-10,000 minimum, then forward the papers to the USA to get you USDA certified, or wherever else your company may be based out of. If the money is not an issue, the amount of effort may be. With organic and fair trade certifications, agents are scheduled to come, for lack of a better word, investigate the farm and the farmers and workers. Their sales, labor costs, soil, and factory are looked over in order to prove that the farm is and has been, for the last 3-5 years, organic and/or fair trade. Often, producers will have their tea tested at a lab for the use of chemicals instead of actually going through the legal work of being certified as organic, they will show the lab results when necessary. There are even home tests for us as the end-user to use to test our teas, fruits, and vegetables.
The point is that these things happen, and they are nearly impossible to catch. The bigger point is that quality is not necessarily determined by whether a product is organic or not. Walk into a nearby Walmart and you will see shelves full of organic chocolates and organic gummy bears or other processed foods. Sure, they may truly be organic, but there is more that goes into determining whether a product is healthy for us or not than just this. When searching out certified agents to get our farm certified organic, I went through a mind-boggling rabbit hole that had me on the phone with some less-than-organic fellows. In business and in life, money goes a long way, and there are absolutely ways that one could get certified organic without an inspector ever showing up at the farm. Dinner and a thick envelope can get all kinds of things done. When we started to speak with more and more organizations about becoming certified Fair Trade and certified Organic, another interesting point surfaced. In short, once you do get certified, what you receive is a simple email with a high resolution JPEG file attached. Any guess what that JPEG is? It is the famous logo that you see on the front of so many boxes with a note, “You may use this in any format, including product packaging, advertisements, online media, ect.� A $10,000 JPEG. This JPEG is emailed all over the world to give hope to the consumer and the producer. My grandfather was a rice farmer in Northern California and made that switch himself, from standard white rice to organic wild rice, and it took a tremendous amount of money(for re-doing the fields, using more expensive fertilizers, the yearly fees to the certifier, and the conversion time). For him, and for many, it may be well worth it, but to the Mr. Gao’s of the world, it is unimaginable to spend that money to prove to someone what you already know.
Pu’er tea is very unique in that it is almost always grown at very high altitudes from trees that are, hopefully, centuries old. These trees were planted before the use of chemicals and fertilizers, and often electricity, and families now live off the leaves of these trees and many are not willing to risk poisoning these ancient lives. These farmers had a crop that they harvested for their own daily use, and to poison the soil and inject chemicals into the very veins of their livelihood, is the same as a man who studies Traditional Chinese Medicine getting a prescription for his high cholesterol. There are better ways to ensure quality and there are times when we can’t prove we didn’t take that pill, but through understanding the differences and knowing the companies we buy our commodities from, we are all in a better position.
Misty Peak Teas is devoted to connecting tea drinker with tea farmer and bringing highquality, organic Puer to the West. Our Puer is the highest quality in the world, grown by one family in the Yunnan province. Misty Peak Teas was founded in 2011 and quickly made waves throughout the tea world, rising to recognition as the highest rated Puer tea online. Now it is sold in over 350 select shops in the US, Europe and China. You can find out more at http://www.mistypeakteas.com.
A Brief History of the Indian Tea Industry by Raj Vable of Young Mountain Tea Recently, talk has been swirling about working conditions in the Indian tea industry. Much of this was prompted by a recent BBC investigation of Assam, which brought to light the harsh realities of life on a tea estate. For those of us interested in the ethical dynamics of tea, this attention is welcomed. At the same time, the conversation has been sharply focused on the current moment, with no attention given to the past. Given the larger colonial forces that shaped the Indian tea industry, it seems a good time to add a historical perspective to the conversation. So here we go, a quick journey through the events that led to Indian tea.
The Early, Early Days Let’s start by rewinding the clock a few hundred years. The year was 1498, and Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer, had just rounded the Cape of Good Hope off the southern tip of Africa. In doing so, he opened up the East to trade with Europe, and the Portuguese were the first to set up their trade routes. Almost 100 years after Vasco da Gama, the British captured a Portuguese DID YOU KNOW? ship that carried a cargo worth half the total holdings of the British crown. This created quite a sensation among British merchants, who quickly realized that there were fortunes to be made. So in 1600, the British queen granted a royal charter to a group of merchants to set up the British East India Company (EIC). The charter gave the EIC a monopoly on all trade with the East, and later the ability to maintain a military, mint money, and effectively serve as a proxy for the British crown. This organization was the world’s first corporation, and historians often point to its creation as the starting point of modern capitalism.
Tea Takes Over Britain For the first 50 years, tea was not a staple of the EIC’s trade because there was no demand back in Britain. However that began to change in 1659, when Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess, married Charles II. Their union has significance to the story of Indian tea for two reasons. First, as a part of the Princess’s dowry, the British received the Portuguese port of Mumbai. This gave them a foothold in the Indian subcontinent, and marked the start of the expansion of the British Raj. Second, Catherine of Braganza brought a culture of drinking tea with her. Prior to Catherine, the British had treated tea only as a passing novelty. However, with a person of the royal court as tea proponent, the drink gained acceptance that spread through all of society. By 1800, tea was the official drink of the United Kingdom. Its trade was hugely profitable, with taxes on its import accounting for 10% of all government revenue. James Norwood Pratt helped us by putting that into perspective: “The value of the trade that the EIC conducted on its fifty yards of waterfront in Canton surpassed its revenue from the whole of India.”
Spoiled Relations with the Supplier…
DID YOU KNOW?
At this point, China was the only supplier of tea to the British. The relationship between the two empires had never been an easy one; the Chinese viewed trade with foreigners as cultural contamination, and the British were, well, imperialistic in their pursuit of fortunes. The frayed relationship between the two empires eventually led to war, which is a story for another time.
However, as the relationship soured, the British began to search for easier places to get their tea. India was a leading candidate, as it was already under the British crown and much closer to Europe than China. At this point though, the British knew very little about tea’s production – for instance, they didn’t know where it was grown or how it was processed.
To discover the source of tea, the EIC sent a Scottish botanist named Robert Fortune into China. Disguised as a Chinese merchant and accompanied by two locals, Fortune penetrated deep into interior China. Through a series of absolutely ridiculous tales filled with bravado, deceit, and adventure, he traced tea up into the mountains. Eventually, he brought the saplings back to the port, where they were sent to India. The secret of tea was out.
Meanwhile back in India... While Fortune was busy in China, two brothers named Robert and Charles Bruce made an equally significant discovery in eastern India. In the dense tropical jungles of Assam, a local Rajah showed the Bruce brothers a subspecies of the Camellia Sinensis that was indigenous to India. Upon this realization, the EIC declared the discovery “By far the most important and valuable that has ever been made on matters connected with agricultural or commercial resources of the Empire.”
Let the Races Begin! With that as the backdrop, the race to set up the Indian tea industry began. The first two regions out of the gates became India’s most famous -- Darjeeling and Assam. Darjeeling, perched high in the foothills of the Himalayas, was seeded with tea that Fortune sent from China; Assam, on the banks of the Brahmaputra, was planted with the indigenous tea found by the Bruce brothers. And the India tea experiment turned out better than any merchant could have imagined. Within 40 years of Fortune’s first trip to China, India became the world’s largest producer of tea.
DID YOU KNOW? Back to the Future Fast forward to the present, and the industry today remains a legacy of the British Raj. The Indian tea industry was built by the British, for the British, and as such is deeply rooted in a mentality of extraction, of both land and labor. Those practices persist because they achieved their goals – to make industrial-scale tea to meet exploding British demand. This is the history that we have inherited. Whether you are a tea drinker or a tea grower, we’re all bound together by this same history of colonialism, globalization, and corporate interests. So where do we go next?
The beautiful thing about the future is that it hasn’t unfolded yet. Change is always happening, including in this very moment, and new possibilities are emerging every day. For evidence, just look to the new tea regions that have ethical consideration woven into their roots. There is an incredible momentum building, and you don’t have to dig deep to find it. We have a long way to go, but it’s getting better.
Raj Vable is the proud founder of Young Mountain Tea. The company started with a deal – if Himalayan farmers in the Kumaon region of N. India would grow tea, Raj would start a company in the US to sell it. Their first tea Kumaon tea, a white peony, will be available at the Vancouver Tea Festival on November 21 and the LA Tea Festival on Dec 5 and 6. To learn more, please visit youngmountaintea.com
To learn more, check out these great books. Gascoyne, K., Marchand, F., Desharnais, J., & Hugo, A. (2014). Tea: History, Terroirs, Varieties. Buffalo, New York, USA: Firefly Books Ltd. Martin, L. C. (2007). Tea: The Drink That Changed The World. North Clarendon, Vermont, USA: Tuttle Publishing.
DID YOU KNOW?
Nielson, J., & Pritchard, B. (2009). Value Chain Struggles: Institutions and Governance in the Plantation Districts of South India. West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell.
Pettigrew, J. (2011). The Tea Companion. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: Running Press. Pratt, J. N. (2011). The Ultimate Tea Lover's Treasury. San Francisco, California, USA: Devan Sha and Ravi Sutodia. Rose, S. (2011). For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History. Penguin Books.
Tea is Our Lifeblood by Elyse Petersen of Tealet
A few weeks ago the Tea Board of India announced that 75% of tea producers in West Bengal (home of Darjeeling) were operating at a loss. An even more devastating story can be told about the tea industry of Sri Lanka as an even higher percentage of tea producers must be supported through government subsidies to keep leaves flowing into the teapots of consumers around the world. How long can this last? What is the source of this problem and what are the consequences? These are important questions that tea lovers and tea business people need to think about as we make both consumption and business decisions. Tea is one of our longest cultivated agriculture products in human history and its impact on society and environment can’t be ignored.
To be direct, the source of this problem is the demand for lower prices. This problem is not just seen in the tea industry, but in all consumer products with the help of the buying and marketing powers of the big box retail system. Consumers have been conditioned to expect lower prices, especially for our most essential life items such as food and tea. The market price for tea has not changed for the past three decades as the tea business has explored new production locations and methods that don’t have as many demanding issues like resource and labor costs. Tea has become a global commodity where all producers of a similar quality product must be on the same playing field competing on price. Producers have become desperate to find ways to keep production costs down and increase productivity. In reality, the only expense that is controllable, with the help of government lobbying, is the cost of labor. Big tea industry players that are interested in satisfying the demand for low-priced tea have successfully influenced the minimum wage of tea workers to remain low. In West Bengal, where tea production is unprofitable, tea farm workers are paid a minimum wage of 90INR a day, equivalent to about $1.50 a day. In addition to the minimum wage, the tea garden is supposed to provide a list of social programs, but in a recent BBC report it was found that these programs are often not provided to their fullest. Although there are executives that are making these decisions with human hearts, we must keep in mind that they are working to satisfy a demand which originates with everyone’s spending dollars. Another negative consequence of this phenomenon is environmental. When a tea producer is only able to make a profit with quantity they are forced to seek any option possible to increase production. In recent times, the tea industry has turned to monoculture planting and the use of chemical fertilizers. Both of these actions will result in significantly higher efficiency of land, but have a detrimental impact on the environment. For instance, in Coonoor, Nilgiris, South India, the government was so excited to introduce Camellia sinensis as an economic development tool that communities were encouraged to cut down existing crops and trees to optimize the land space for tea. As a result, many hilltop communities have lost their water source. Where streams and wetlands once existed communities must now truck in water supplies to stay alive. Chemical fertilizers provide immediate supercharged nutrients for tea plants but deplete the nutrients in the soil and put the tea grower in a position where more and more fertilizers must be used each year to keep their plants productive. Fertilizers also pack the soil so it is no longer able to retain water.
The consequences of this problem are real and are being acknowledged by even the largest players in the industry. The Forum for the Future published a report which talks about these topics and poses some solutions. Ultimately, the solution is a higher price for tea. If the tea producer is profitable and empowered enough to focus on quality rather than quantity, they will be able to make better decisions as to how they treat their workers and their land. No one exactly knows what the price of tea needs to be for this level of sustainability, but I have heard figures as high as seven times the current price. As a consumer, if you want to do your part to make this happen, seek out tea sources you can trust and ask questions about where the tea came from. Tea is our lifeblood. Treat it that way.
Tealet is a direct from grower retail and wholesale marketplace and subscription model that connects tea lovers with teas from around the world. Growers build boutique brands through stories while drinkers browse, review, and purchase teas. Tealet is disintermediating one of the world's oldest industries that is ripe for disruption. You can find out more at http://www.tealet.com
This article was originally published on T Ching on October 29th, 2015 and is shared here with the permission of the author. Further Reading 70 pc of tea gardens in West Bengal making losses: TAI - The Economic Times Bengal tea workers demand minimum wage - The Hindu The bitter story behind the UK's national drink - BBC The Future of Tea - Forum For The Future
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION’S DEVASTATING EFFECT ON TEA EDUCATION
An excerpt from The Wild Truth of Tea by J.T. Hunter & Shana Zang of Wild Tea Qi In order to understand the current state of tea and the effect of the Cultural Revolution on tea, you must first learn a little history. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong, China’s controversial leader since the communist party came to power in 1949, had the goal of wiping out any connection the Chinese people had to their traditional culture. He was just doing what he thought was the only way to save his country. At that time, China was being invaded by multiple foreign powers such as the US, Japan, and others. He thought that if he did not do something drastic, then China would be completely taken over. What he didn’t count on was how devastating his policies would be for his country. Since tea was a major part of traditional Chinese culture, he was determined to destroy its legacy.
Spent more than US$10,000 annually on vacations.
He ordered tea plantations to be burnt down and had old stores full of tea, such as really old puer, confiscated or destroyed. The loss of so many old puer stores was so devastating that the Chinese had to develop a way to ferment puer more quickly. This is how modern fermented puer began. Fermented puer is known in Chinese as shou, or cooked, puer. It typically takes 7 years until puer starts naturally fermenting properly, as one of my most trusted traditional Chinese medicine doctors shared with me. In this new style of quick fermentation, they pour water over the leaves and pile them in an almost greenhouse-like room with something covering the tea so it can decompose more quickly. Just before it turns moldy, they dry fry it in a wok, or in a large scale factory they will use machines. Tea has had very long history in China, but the first real tea course established in Chinese universities was in 1936 at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong, China. However, from 1936 to 1976, China went through a lot of tough times. After the Cultural Revolution10 ended, China started to develop again. In 1977, Chinese universities started to open up again, and the first university students after the Cultural Revolution graduated in 1982. Those students’ jobs were all arranged by the government – they were required to do jobs that exactly related to what they had studied in the university, and every single student who graduated was placed in a job when they graduated. Many of them are still in important positions now. No matter whether it is politics, economy, culture, education, or agriculture‌.. no matter which part of China, the first university students who graduated in 1982 are still controlling China. They have had more opportunities than any other graduating class, and as of now they have lots of influence. From 1949 until the end of the Cultural Revolution, China had no private enterprises. From 1985 onward, the Chinese started a circulation market based on the agricultural organization revolution period. At that time, which was exactly when those graduated students started working and changing the Chinese economy, until 1994, China started to open up for tea export. At that time, each of the tea provinces like Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong, Yunnan, Sichuan, etc. all had tea import and export state-owned enterprises. The students who graduated from the tea programs in agriculture universities all went back to the provinces where they originally came from to work in those tea import and export state-owned enterprises. Because tea export required people who can speak English, those who could speak English and also graduated from the tea programs in agricultural universities were most likely to be in charge of tea export in the tea import and export state-owned enterprises. At that time, the tea import and export state-owned enterprises divided the international major tea import market as follows: Europe, the UK, the Middle East, Japan, the US, and Morocco. ThoseSpent areas were all major tea export markets which were more than US 10 000 annually targeted. $
,
on vacations.
Those people who could speak English and graduated from the tea programs at the Agriculture University were sent to those different areas to establish the market for the tea import and export stateowned enterprises. Some of them stayed in those different countries over the years and got lots of customer information, and some never returned to China (at that time, a normal person being able to get out of China was an unbelievable opportunity) and found a new life overseas. Some people started to control the particular markets that they specialized in. They had all the customer information and they started to use the tea import and export state-owned enterprises to sell teas to those customers, using their situation of information asymmetry, so that both they and the customers could earn commissions. This was a big time in the world of tea business. At this time, those Chinese who had the opportunity to go abroad and establish the overseas markets built up personal relationships with specific persons who worked in the import tea companies in those other countries, and both of them started to accumulate funds. Most of them have maintained this relationship to this very day, and they are mostly 50 or 60 years old now. They still have control over the business, and for some of them, when they retire, their children will inherit their business. Around 1990 to 2000, some of those Chinese who were in that first graduating class after the Cultural Revolution and worked for tea import and export state-owned enterprises had already accumulated sufficient funds to start their own companies. Afterwards, more and more private enterprises started up during Deng Xiaoping’s11 time. Deng Xiaoping was the head leader of China and also established very open policies and opportunities for private enterprises, as well as for those people who had very close relationships with other countries’ tea import business directors. Gradually, the tea import and export state-owned enterprises were forgotten by the world, and the overseas market insiders with their current private companies were more in touch with the markets. These people had more power and money than anybody else. From the buying of tea plantations to exportation, the whole chain of production has been controlled by this type of people in China until today. Some of them became major shareholders of tea import and export state-owned enterprises, and some of them established their own export tea companies. Today, some of them are part of fair trade and organic certification entities, but their purpose is ultimately to profit from the tea export business. Essentially, nothing has changed in years. So this can very clearly explain why after the Tea Research Institute of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences created new breeds of tea plants and chemicals, as the mass production tea industry could then easily expand across the entire country. From the source to the market, everything is in the exact same chain, and control lies in the hands of only a very few people.
Nowadays, most young students who graduate from agricultural university don’t even have the opportunity to see how a specific tea is produced, and some of them don’t have any opportunity to get involved with the tea industry, even though they graduated from a tea program in the university. Their only wish is to find a simple job. I had few friends who were young and full of energy when they graduated from the tea program at their agriculture university. They told me they loved tea and wanted to do something about tea, but when you really get to know them, you discover that some of them have beautiful wishes, but don’t even really know what they have learned at the university. A young boy who had just graduated from the tea program at an agricultural university came to visit me, and we drank tea together. I asked him if he knew how to process black tea, and he couldn’t give me even a basic answer. Then when we drank a normal white tea, he told me, “What a nice cup of green tea!” I feel very sad that some of our young people lack the opportunity to get a good education in the subject of tea at the university. Most of them just memorized answers for exams, and when they graduate, they may not even have the opportunity to see what a real tea tree is like. But some middle-aged and elderly people (in that first class that graduated after the Cultural Revolution) still control the whole tea world and are letting those young people become their foolish slaves. Nowadays, the tea world is still controlled by those types of people in China. The Cultural Revolution destroyed China’s traditional vibrancy, and nowadays, people are fully under the influence of those powerful personages from that first graduating class whose sole purpose is making money
Supporting sustainable, organic tea farms and plantations is a cornerstone of Wild Tea Qi’s mission. We never buy tea from mono-culture, mass produced tea farms. We visit each tea farm and plantation to ensure sustainability and harmony with the environment. You can find out more at http://www.wildteaqi.com
This survey was conducted anonymously through Survey Monkey and there was a total of 71 responses.
How important is organic to you when purchasing tea? -Very Important 19.72% -Somewhat Important 52.11% -Not Important 28.17%
SURVEY SAYS by Nicole Martin
How important is fair trade to you when purchasing tea? -Very Important 28.17% -Somewhat Important 54.93% -Not Important 16.90%
How confident are you that your tea is ethically sourced? -Very Confident 32.39% -Somewhat Confident 49.30% -Not Confident 18.31%
While collecting the articles for this issue I had the idea to conduct a survey to see how consumers felt about some of the issues that we're addressing. Although no exactly scientific, I think the results were very interesting. When asked what organic means to them most people answered that it was tea grown without pesticides. There were quite a few who expressed that they believed that the organic label did not mean much at all. Fair trade seemed a bit more clear to most people as they most common answer was fair wages being paid to the workers. What I found interesting was that some refered to them as workers while others refered to them as farmers. A lot of that probably has to do with what region they usually purchase their tea from. I'm inclined to believe that these answers give us hope of a better future for tea but at the same time, we have to consider that the results are slightly skewed. My social media followers and people who belong to tea forums are not necessarily your average tea drinker. They think beyond the CTC tea bag and they are more engaged with the product
HOW TO TELL IF YOUR TEA IS ETHICALLY SOURCED There are a lot of options out there for consumers and it can be hard to weed through them all. Although there are never guarantees, there a few things that I look for to make sure that my tea is ethically sourced. by Nicole Martin
1
2
3
4
DIRECT FROM THE GROWER Thanks to the internet there are quite a few growers that you can purchase from directly, allowing them to make a higher profit margin.
DIRECT TRADE The next best thing is purchasing from tea companies who obtain their tea directly from growers themselves.
5
In the tea world trust is earned. Any company that refuses to tell you how their tea is sourced is not one that you want to deal with. Even if they purchased it from a distributor, they should be able to tell you anything that you need to know about their product.
KNOW WHERE IT'S FROM Generic tea (i.e. just simply labeled "green tea") that doesn't tell you the region where it was grown is much more likely to be commodity tea that was not produced in an ethical way.
LOOSE LEAF OVER TEA BAGS Tea bags are most often made with lower quality material from commodity tea plantations. The price is lower, resulting in less making its way down the line to workers.
ASK QUESTIONS
6
BE AN EDUCATED CONSUMER No two growing regions are exactly the same. Politics and local culture all affect the tea that goes into your cup. Read books on the subject and stay up to date on happenings in the countries where your tea comes from.
Organic, Boreganic by Geoffrey Norman of Steep Stories I’m probably one of the few who reside in the greater Portland area who never gave a damn about the word “organic”. To me, it was just a fancy-schmancy sticker placed upon foodstuffs to make aging hippies feel better about their life choices. I was granted some greater insight into the process of organic certification this last year . . . when I was given the opportunity to write about it. Teaity.com required my writery services in doing mini-articles about various organic certifications around the world. The experience was dizzying to say the least. Now, I have a newfound respect for what a farmer has to go through to attain a fully-organic backing, and a deep, seething hatred of the process as a whole. The worst part is, no two organic certifications are the same (obviously), but – also! – nor are the requirements. What one country might consider organic may not meet the criteria in another. Case in point: Europe. Yes, the entire content. The EU Organic Certification process is one of the strictest and most convoluted. Products that contain any trace of genetic modification are denied consideration. That and – to receive the label – products must contain 95% (or above) actual organic ingredients. USDA Organic Certification only requires that items have up to 95% organic ingredients to don the seal; 76% at the minimum. The process gets even harrier when one considers that individual countries within the EU are also given some leeway in how strict those regulations are within their borders. The problem is only compounded further when products from one country (with one standard) are exported to another country with another standard. To combat this, some countries actually “share” certifications. Or at the very least, automatically approve products if certain treaties have been considered. Example: Japan and the USA. Products certified as organic by a USDA-backed regulating body in the USA can also be considered organic by the JAS (Japanese Agricultural Standards). Unfortunately, such agreements are a rarity, not the norm.
In many cases (especially in regards to tea) a foreign regulating body in the exporting country – accredited by the USDA – may have to issue the certification. All this so that a product can be labeled as such in the country it’s arriving to. I feel like I’m covered in red tape just thinking about it. What is missing is a unifying standard; something to simplify the process that all existing regulatory bodies acknowledge as universal. I’m not saying that individual continental standards be removed, simply streamlined. Let one certification sticker cross over with another and vice-versa. And I have just an example for how this could work. It involves a goddess. Sorta. I remember when I was first introduced to the word “biodynamic”. It was a white tea produced by an estate located in Tamil Nadu, India. It was delicious – all fruity, fluttery and friggin’ fantastic. Afterwards, I decided to look up what biodynamic even meant . . . and I was frightened. I mean, the process made sense, but the reasons behind it were a little “out there”. The idea behind the agricultural practice being: Everything on the farm was to act like part of a living organism. A totally sustainable biosphere; it all sounded quasi-religious. Many years later, I had to write an article on the certifying body for biodynamic agriculture – Demeter International. What blew me away was that the organization was founded in the late 1920s, and that it was one of the three largest organic certification bodies in the world. That and it had over 5,000 registered members – 1,400 in Germany alone. The country that founded the organization. Yes, this was founded in Germany. I’ll let that sink in. Now, I’m not suggesting that Demeter International become the crossover organic certification body in the world. I’m suggesting that a lot can be learned by its example. One body overseeing several other bodies, with one universally-accepted standard. Is that so much to ask? In the meantime, we’ve got some red tape to cut. Now, where did I put those scissors . . . ? Geoffrey Norman began writing about tea in 2007. Since then, he has made it a point to track down unique teas and the stories behind them. He is currently working on his first book and can usually be found in his pajamas with a mug in hand. You can find out more at http://www.steepstories.com
From the Blog Here's a few posts that you might have missed since the lass issue