Organic tea or not

Type of organic certificates:

There are two main types of ‘organic certificates’ in the tea industry:

1. Plantation certified :  Tea plantation owners apply for organic certificate for their plantations/tea fields, which are granted after assessment of farming practice against guidelines. 
   • These certificates are renewed regularly to ensure that the guidelines are followed and standards are met.
   • There are various local and international bodies that carry out inspections and issue certificates. 
   • This type of certification is  more efficient  - being at the plantation level, but has the weakness that once granted can be misused at the product level. 
2. Product  certified : the final products are tested for residuals, as well as assessments for farming procedures.
   • The strength of this type of certificate is that it is attached to the products, and therefore less chance for misuse. 
   • The weakness is its double costs: cost of the plantation certificate and product certificate

Regulation of tea production in China

China is the biggest tea producing country in the world, producing one plus million tonnes every year. The regulation for organic farming at the legislation level however did not start until the early 1900s, mainly as a result of excessive use of synthetic agriculture products of recent years. To date, China is one of the countries listed as ‘having fully implemented regulations on organic agriculture’.

Teas are graded into three levels according their organic nature:

1. Organic tea
2. ‘Green products’ : teas with minimum chemical residues that the test results meet food safety standards of most of the countries in the world.
3.  ‘Public harm free’ tea:  teas produced using conventional methods where synthetic fertilizer and pesticides are used.  This classification mets the health standards of Chinese authorities. This level is the basic entry level for a tea product to be on the market.

Note that Tea quality grading is quite different from organic classification.

People use organic or green products for two main reasons: 

1. To avoid potential health issues.
2. For environmental sustainability reasons.

Human health implications:

The results are not conclusive  that organic products contribute to improved health outcomes as outlined by the following two recent studies (2009) that produced differing conclusions. 

1. In 2009, a 18 million € project (QLIF) of a 5-year integrated study funded by the European commission with regard to organic products and their potential implication on human health concluded the following results: ¹
   • The organic crop and livestock have higher levels of nutritionally desirable compounds (e.g., vitamins/antioxidants and poly-unsaturated fatty acids such as omega-3 and CLA) and lower levels of undesirable compounds (such as heavy metals, mycotoxins, pesticide residues and glyco-alkaloids). 
   • However, ‘further and more detailed studies are required to provide proof for positive health impacts of organic diets on human and animal health’.
2. The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) conducted a system review of 50 year’s worth of research evidences concluded: “there is no good evidence that consumption of organic food offers greater nutritional values, more consumer safety or any distinguishable difference in taste.” “Consumers may choose to buy organic fruit, vegetables and meat because they believe them to be more nutritious than other food. However, the balance of current scientific evidence does not support this view.” ²

The potential environment implications:

Again there is no universally agreed conclusion on this question : 

1. The concern here is to avoid potential harm from synthetic pesticides to the environment; sustaining diverse ecosystems; using less energy per unit of yield and producing less waste. 
2. The counter arguments are: organic farming generally results in less yield per unit, more land is therefore needed to feed the world’s population which causes more rainforest being cleared and ecosystem destroyed . {reference}

Cost of organic products:

Organic products typically cost 10% to 40% more than conventional products.

1."Quality Low Input Food Project" (APA). http://ec.europa.eu/research/research-for-europe/agriculture-quality-low-input-food_en.html. Retrieved 2009-11-23.

2.Sophie Goodchild (2009-07-). "Organic food 'no healthier' blow". London Evening Standard. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23725592-details/article.do. Retrieved 2009-07-29.

Valley Green Tea is both health and environment conscious. We believe in living in a harmonious relationship with our environment is essential for the general well being of all human as a society.

We support organic farming and green products as we do believe excessive use of synthetic products are harmful to both to human health and environment:

• We obtain first hand information on the farming practice of our tea producers. We meet our suppliers, of who most are tea farmers or are directly connected to the tea farmer, on a regular base to discuss farming procedures and inspect the tea plantations and factories when possible. 
• We obtain a plantation organic certificate for majority of our teas – either issued by a Chinese authority or a international organic body, sometimes both as an assurance of their organic farming practice.
• For those teas that grow in the wild, for example our Wu Yi rock teas and Pu-erh tea, we take the approach of ‘know the farmers, know the products’. If the teas are harvested from the wild, there is no need for a certificate.

Valley Green Tea does not believe that individual organic certificates for individual products are necessary:

1. While the evidence for the  health benefits of tea drinking are overwhelming, the evidence of additional health benefits of consuming organic tea is not so convincing. In addition, tea is normally consumed as a brew. It is rare for the actual tea leaves to be digested, although the pesticides residue tests carried out by Chinese authorities use grinded dry leaves which has much higher reading than the tea brew. We therefore believe that the benefit of tea consumption largely out weight the potential harm caused by of residues if any, even when the tea is not organic.
2. We do not apply for individual organic certificate for individual products as we believe the additional value is not justified by the additional cost.

Conclusion:

Organically grown tea is a noble aim. And was the way that the teas were cultivated in China for a long time. It has to be acknowledged however that we live in an era where intervention is required to support current populations with available land available for agriculture. Finding the fine balance of using the most productive agricultural method while causing minimum harm to both human and the environment we live in is where the effort should be put to.