The Dark Side of TeaOctober 2015

EDITOR'S NOTE

Nicole Martin

This issue represents many things. It is the fourth issue, meaning that it hasbeen 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 beenincredible. So many tea industry friends have generously shared their words

and knowledge as well. Remember in the last issue when I told you all thatyour 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 ormatcha. 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 surethat 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 andideas. 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 TRAPBY NICHOLAS LOZ I TOMISTY 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 high-

quality, 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.

Recently, talk has been swirling about working conditionsin the Indian tea industry. Much of this was prompted bya recent BBC investigation of Assam, which brought tolight the harsh realities of life on a tea estate. For those ofus interested in the ethical dynamics of tea, this attentionis welcomed.

At the same time, the conversation has been sharplyfocused on the current moment, with no attention givento the past. Given the larger colonial forces that shapedthe Indian tea industry, it seems a good time to add ahistorical perspective to the conversation. So here we go,a quick journey through the events that led to Indian tea.

A Brief History of theIndian Tea Industry

by Raj Vable of Young Mountain Tea

DID YOU KNOW?

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 ofGood Hope off the southern tip of Africa. In doing so, he opened up theEast to trade with Europe, and the Portuguese were the first to set uptheir trade routes.

Almost 100 years after Vasco da Gama, the British captured a Portugueseship that carried a cargo worth half the total holdings of the British crown.This created quite a sensation among British merchants, who quicklyrealized that there were fortunes to be made.

So in 1600, the British queen granted a royal charter to a group ofmerchants to set up the British East India Company (EIC). The charter gavethe EIC a monopoly on all trade with the East, and later the ability tomaintain a military, mint money, and effectively serve as a proxy for theBritish crown. This organization was the world’s first corporation, andhistorians often point to its creation as the starting point of moderncapitalism.

For the first 50 years, tea was not a staple of the EIC’s trade because there was no demand back inBritain. However that began to change in 1659, when Catherine of Braganza, a Portugueseprincess, 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. Thisgave them a foothold in the Indian subcontinent, and marked the start of the expansion of theBritish Raj. Second, Catherine of Braganza brought a culture of drinking tea with her. Prior toCatherine, the British had treated tea only as a passing novelty. However, with a person of the royalcourt 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 taxeson its import accounting for 10% of all government revenue. James Norwood Pratt helped us byputting that into perspective: “The value of the trade that the EIC conducted on its fifty yards ofwaterfront in Canton surpassed its revenue from the whole of India.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Tea Takes Over Britain

At this point, China was the only supplier of tea to the British. The relationship between the twoempires had never been an easy one; the Chinese viewed trade with foreigners as culturalcontamination, and the British were, well, imperialistic in their pursuit of fortunes. The frayedrelationship 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 Europethan 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.

Spoiled Relations with the Supplier…

To discover the source of tea, the EIC sent a Scottishbotanist named Robert Fortune into China. Disguised asa Chinese merchant and accompanied by two locals,Fortune penetrated deep into interior China. Through aseries of absolutely ridiculous tales filled with bravado,deceit, and adventure, he traced tea up into themountains. Eventually, he brought the saplings back tothe port, where they were sent to India. The secret of teawas out.

DID YOU KNOW?

Meanwhile back in India...

With that as the backdrop, the race to set up the Indian tea industrybegan. The first two regions out of the gates became India’smost famous -- Darjeeling and Assam. Darjeeling, perched high inthe foothills of the Himalayas, was seeded with tea that Fortune sentfrom China; Assam, on the banks of the Brahmaputra, was plantedwith the indigenous tea found by the Bruce brothers. And the Indiatea experiment turned out better than any merchant couldhave imagined. Within 40 years of Fortune’s first trip to China, Indiabecame the world’s largest producer of tea.

While Fortune was busy in China, two brothers named Robert and Charles Bruce made an equallysignificant discovery in eastern India. In the dense tropical jungles of Assam, a local Rajah showedthe Bruce brothers a subspecies of the Camellia Sinensis that was indigenous to India. Upon thisrealization, the EIC declared the discovery “By far the most important and valuable that has everbeen made on matters connected with agricultural or commercial resources of the Empire.”

Let the Races Begin!

Back to the Future

Fast forward to the present, and the industry today remains a legacy of the British Raj. The Indiantea industry was built by the British, for the British, and as such is deeply rooted in a mentality ofextraction, of both land and labor. Those practices persist because they achieved their goals – tomake 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 allbound together by this same history of colonialism, globalization, and corporate interests. Sowhere do we go next?

DID YOU KNOW?

The beautiful thing about the future is that it hasn’t unfoldedyet. Change is always happening, including in this verymoment, and new possibilities are emerging every day. Forevidence, just look to the new tea regions that have ethicalconsideration woven into their roots. There is anincredible momentum building, and you don’t have to digdeep to find it. We have a long way togo, 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 theKumaon region of N. India would grow tea, Raj would start acompany in the US to sell it.

Their first tea Kumaon tea, a white peony, will be available atthe Vancouver Tea Festival on November 21 and the LA TeaFestival on Dec 5 and 6. To learn more, please visityoungmountaintea.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.

Nielson, J., & Pritchard, B. (2009). Value Chain Struggles: Institutions and Governance inthe 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 Shaand Ravi Sutodia.

Rose, S. (2011). For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink andChanged History. Penguin Books.

Tea isOurLifebloodby Elyse Petersenof Tealet

A few weeks ago the Tea Board of India announcedthat 75% of tea producers in West Bengal (home ofDarjeeling) were operating at a loss. An even moredevastating story can be told about the tea industryof Sri Lanka as an even higher percentage of teaproducers must be supported through governmentsubsidies to keep leaves flowing into the teapots ofconsumers around the world. How long can this last?What is the source of this problem and what are theconsequences? These are important questions thattea lovers and tea business people need to thinkabout as we make both consumption and businessdecisions. Tea is one of our longest cultivatedagriculture products in human history and its impacton society and environment can’t be ignored.

To be direct, the source of this problem is the demand for lower prices. This problemis not just seen in the tea industry, but in all consumer products with the help of thebuying and marketing powers of the big box retail system. Consumers have beenconditioned to expect lower prices, especially for our most essential life items such asfood and tea. The market price for tea has not changed for the past three decades asthe tea business has explored new production locations and methods that don’t haveas many demanding issues like resource and labor costs. Tea has become a globalcommodity where all producers of a similar quality product must be on the sameplaying field competing on price.

Producers have become desperate to find ways to keep production costs down andincrease productivity. In reality, the only expense that is controllable, with the help ofgovernment lobbying, is the cost of labor. Big tea industry players that are interestedin satisfying the demand for low-priced tea have successfully influenced theminimum wage of tea workers to remain low. In West Bengal, where tea production isunprofitable, tea farm workers are paid a minimum wage of 90INR a day, equivalentto about $1.50 a day. In addition to the minimum wage, the tea garden is supposed toprovide a list of social programs, but in a recent BBC report it was found that theseprograms are often not provided to their fullest. Although there are executives thatare making these decisions with human hearts, we must keep in mind that they areworking to satisfy a demand which originates with everyone’s spending dollars.

Another negative consequence of this phenomenon is environmental. When a teaproducer is only able to make a profit with quantity they are forced to seek any optionpossible to increase production. In recent times, the tea industry has turned tomonoculture planting and the use of chemical fertilizers. Both of these actions willresult in significantly higher efficiency of land, but have a detrimental impact on theenvironment. For instance, in Coonoor, Nilgiris, South India, the government was soexcited to introduce Camellia sinensis as an economic development tool thatcommunities were encouraged to cut down existing crops and trees to optimize theland 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 watersupplies to stay alive. Chemical fertilizers provide immediate supercharged nutrientsfor tea plants but deplete the nutrients in the soil and put the tea grower in a positionwhere more and more fertilizers must be used each year to keep their plantsproductive. 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 thelargest players in the industry. The Forum for the Future published a report whichtalks about these topics and poses some solutions. Ultimately, the solution is a higherprice for tea. If the tea producer is profitable and empowered enough to focus onquality rather than quantity, they will be able to make better decisions as to how theytreat their workers and their land. No one exactly knows what the price of tea needsto be for this level of sustainability, but I have heard figures as high as seven times thecurrent price. As a consumer, if you want to do your part to make this happen, seekout tea sources you can trust and ask questions about where the tea came from. Teais our lifeblood. Treat it that way.

Tealet is a direct from grower retail and wholesalemarketplace and subscription model that connectstea lovers with teas from around the world. Growersbuild boutique brands through stories whiledrinkers browse, review, and purchase teas. Tealet isdisintermediating one of the world's oldestindustries 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, 2015and is shared here with the permission of the author.

Further Reading

70 pc of tea gardens in West Bengal making losses: TAI - The EconomicTimes

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

An excerpt from The WildTruth of Tea by J.T. Hunter &Shana Zang of Wild Tea Qi

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION’SDEVASTATING EFFECT ON TEA

EDUCATION

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. Those areas were all major tea export markets which were

targeted.Spent more than

US$10,000 annually

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 state-

owned 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

SURVEY SAYS

How important isorganic to you whenpurchasing tea?

How important isfair trade to youwhen purchasingtea?

While collecting the articles for this issue I had theidea to conduct a survey to see how consumers feltabout some of the issues that we're addressing.Although no exactly scientific, I think the results werevery interesting.

When asked what organic means to them mostpeople answered that it was tea grown withoutpesticides. There were quite a few who expressed thatthey believed that the organic label did not meanmuch at all.

Fair trade seemed a bit more clear to most people asthey most common answer was fair wages being paidto the workers. What I found interesting was thatsome refered to them as workers while others referedto them as farmers. A lot of that probably has to dowith what region they usually purchase their tea from.

I'm inclined to believe that these answers give us hopeof a better future for tea but at the same time, wehave to consider that the results are slightly skewed.My social media followers and people who belong totea forums are not necessarily your average teadrinker. They think beyond the CTC tea bag and theyare more engaged with the product

by Nicole Martin

How confidentare you that yourtea is ethicallysourced?

-Very Important 19.72%

-Somewhat Important 52.11%

-Not Important 28.17%

This survey was conductedanonymously through SurveyMonkey and there was a totalof 71 responses.

-Very Important 28.17%

-Somewhat Important 54.93%

-Not Important 16.90%

-Very Confident 32.39%

-Somewhat Confident 49.30%

-Not Confident 18.31%

HOW TO TELL IF YOUR TEAIS ETHICALLY SOURCED

1D I R E C T F R O M T H E G R O W E R

Thanks to the internet there arequite a few growers that you canpurchase from directly, allowingthem to make a higher profit margin.

2 D I R E C T T R A D EThe next best thing ispurchasing from tea companieswho obtain their tea directlyfrom growers themselves.

3 K N O W W H E R E I T ' S F R O MGeneric tea (i.e. just simplylabeled "green tea") thatdoesn't tell you the regionwhere it was grown is muchmore likely to be commoditytea that was not produced in anethical way.

4 L O O S E L E A F O V E R T E A B A G S

Tea bags are most often madewith lower quality materialfrom commodity teaplantations. The price is lower,resulting in less making its waydown the line to workers.

There are a lot of options out there forconsumers and it can be hard to weedthrough them all. Although there arenever guarantees, there a few things thatI look for to make sure that my tea isethically sourced.

by Nicole Martin

A S K Q U E S T I O N S

In the tea world trust isearned. Any company thatrefuses to tell you how theirtea is sourced is not one thatyou want to deal with. Even ifthey purchased it from adistributor, they should be ableto tell you anything that youneed to know about theirproduct.

B E A N E D U C A T E D C O N S U M E R

No two growing regions areexactly the same. Politics andlocal culture all affect the teathat goes into your cup. Readbooks on the subject and stayup to date on happenings in thecountries where your teacomes from.

5

6

Organic,Boreganic

I’m probably one of the few who reside in the greater Portland area who never gave a damnabout the word “organic”. To me, it was just a fancy-schmancy sticker placed uponfoodstuffs to make aging hippies feel better about their life choices. I was granted somegreater insight into the process of organic certification this last year . . . when I was given theopportunity to write about it. Teaity.com required my writery services in doing mini-articlesabout various organic certifications around the world. The experience was dizzying to saythe least.

Now, I have a newfound respect for what a farmer has to go through to attain a fully-organicbacking, and a deep, seething hatred of the process as a whole. The worst part is, no twoorganic certifications are the same (obviously), but – also! – nor are the requirements. Whatone 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. Productsthat contain any trace of genetic modification are denied consideration. That and – toreceive the label – products must contain 95% (or above) actual organic ingredients. USDAOrganic Certification only requires that items have up to 95% organic ingredients to don theseal; 76% at the minimum. The process gets even harrier when one considers that individualcountries within the EU are also given some leeway in how strict those regulations arewithin their borders.

The problem is only compounded further when products from one country (with onestandard) are exported to another country with another standard. To combat this, somecountries actually “share” certifications. Or at the very least, automatically approve productsif certain treaties have been considered. Example: Japan and the USA. Products certified asorganic by a USDA-backed regulating body in the USA can also be considered organic bythe JAS (Japanese Agricultural Standards). Unfortunately, such agreements are a rarity, notthe norm.

by Geoffrey Norman of Steep Stories

In many cases (especially in regards to tea) a foreign regulating body in the exportingcountry – accredited by the USDA – may have to issue the certification. All this so that aproduct can be labeled as such in the country it’s arriving to. I feel like I’m covered in redtape just thinking about it.

What is missing is a unifying standard; something to simplify the process that all existingregulatory bodies acknowledge as universal. I’m not saying that individual continentalstandards be removed, simply streamlined. Let one certification sticker cross over withanother and vice-versa. And I have just an example for how this could work. It involves agoddess. Sorta.

I remember when I was first introduced to the word “biodynamic”. It was a white teaproduced by an estate located in Tamil Nadu, India. It was delicious – all fruity, fluttery andfriggin’ fantastic. Afterwards, I decided to look up what biodynamic even meant . . . and I wasfrightened.

I mean, the process made sense, but the reasons behind it were a little “out there”. The ideabehind the agricultural practice being: Everything on the farm was to act like part of a livingorganism. 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 thelate 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 thatfounded 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 organiccertification body in the world. I’m suggesting that a lot can be learned by its example. Onebody 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 thestories behind them. He is currently working on his first bookand can usually be found in his pajamas with a mug in hand.

You can find out more at http://www.steepstories.com

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