Cup of tea anyone?
An investigation by Greenpeace has found that pesticides banned for use on tea have been used to grow products marketed by some of China’s top tea companies. Some of the firms, which include China Tea, Tenfu Tea and China Tea King, export tea products to Japan, the US and Europe. (Apparently we’re safe.)
- Greenpeace find pesticides in top brand teas
Greenpeace (may the Gods bless the sneaky rascals) bought 18 tea products—including green tea, oolong tea and jasmine tea— manufactured by nine different companies in December 2011 and January 2012.
As stated by Wang Jing, Greenpeace’s Food and Agriculture campaigner, on the Greenpeace website, “Seven of those firms are among China’s Top 10 tea sellers, and they are all selling tea tainted with banned pesticides. It’s a huge embarrassment for China’s tea industry.”
Furthermore:
Testing that was carried out independently by an accredited lab found that 12 of the 18 samples contained at least one pesticide banned for use on tea, such as methomyl and endosulfan (1).
“These companies have failed both their domestic and international consumers,” added Wang Jing. “You don’t know how many people – and for how long – have unknowingly been drinking toxic pesticides in their tea.”
And thankfully:
“Greenpeace demands China’s tea companies stop the use of highly toxic pesticides altogether, drastically reduce the use of pesticides, and establish an effective traceability and supply chain control system that ensures the reduction of pesticide use and its compliance with the law.”
You can read the full report Pesticides: Hidden ingredients in Chinese Tea here.
I prefer organic brands (international or Australian grown). My favourites are Aldi’s Just Organic brand (and it’s certified organic) Green tea; Nature’s Cuppa Ceylon Tea (also certified), which I buy online here. Just add organic honey!
Cheers
Miche
REFERENCES
(1) Methomyl and endosulfan are banned for use on tea according to Announcement No.1586 issued by China’s Ministry of Agriculture on June 15, 2011.
UPDATE
Toxic Tea leaves Greenpeace sickened ~ The Age
Great work Misha,it’s people like you that help make a difference in the world.very informative and resourceful.look forward to your next blog,cheers
Why thank you sir. It is, however, not a completely altruistic adventure into the blogosphere for me; I just want to breathe cleaner air.
Cheers Mr Slobodan
Misha 🙂
Eww… hair-ties made from condoms, who would of thought? And defective too! Lucky for consumers it wasn’t the other way around… or whatever. I mean we wouldn’t want a population explosion or anything…
Happy to comment on yours. Snap! We both have blogs now. I never really started the other one but just placed a link to this one on it right after I posted on yours (because I had to use my google acc, which is linked to that particular blog) and I knew it might lead to the blank blog. And that’s just weird…
Oh, I moved over to here because WordPress is better (more professional, with better themes, layouts, and it’s more streamlined and easier to use). And I can edit people’s comments when they make mistakes–including my own–in grammar or their spelling is incorrect. (Just kidding on that last bit, but let it be known I have the power to edit comments.)
This is my favourite post: http://the-labyrinth.com/2012/02/20/take-of-your-bra-now/
Wow, this was really informative if not predictable. China doesn’t keep very close watch on where their stuff is coming from, this stuff happened with those hair-ties made from condoms that were defected. It’s pretty bad when Greenpeace can find out this stuff so easily and they didn’t even bother.
Also thank you for commenting on my blog. Why did you change the location of yours?