Every once in a while a truly disturbing story about tea comes to my attention. This one features Celestial Seasonings I’m afraid. Apparently they have been sanctioned by the FDA a number of times for “quality control” issues. This one however involves serious health concerns. A reputable testing lab, Eurofin, evaluated multiple teas by Celestial Seasonings. Their conclusions revealed that many of their teas, including Sleepy Time Kids contained pesticides at levels that exceed FDA regulations. In fact, 91% of their teas tested exceeded the approved limits. For my money, no level of pesticides are acceptable. You can read the test results and make your own determination.
Be sure to continue reading beyond the disclaimer. Apparently the Hain Group – who owns Celestial Seasonings, tried to challenge the findings. They concluded that because this was funded by the Glaucas Group, an investment firm who would benefit by the stock’s decline, the results were tainted. Nice try, however the Eurofin laboratory is a well respected laboratory and there’s no reason to believe that they would compromise their standards.
I think the bigger issue is really about conventionally grown tea vs organic tea. It’s certainly not a problem for the periodic tea drinker to have a cup of tea once a week and ingest some pesticides. If you’re drinking multiple cups of tea a day however, those pesticides will build up and can truly become detrimental to your health. The same can be said about fruits and vegetables of course. I watch in horror when I’m at my local supermarket, while customers put conventionally grown strawberries into their carts. Because of their surface, strawberries are one of the “dirty dozen” of produce that have unacceptably high levels of pesticides on the skin. Since we don’t peel our strawberries, we’re left having to eat these toxic, though delicious, summer berries.
So for all you regular tea drinkers, please think about going organic. You’re on the track with tea, which in my book is the healthiest beverage on the planet. No need to compromise that healthy selection with pesticides.
Im regular tea drinker – organic tea is the best in quality.
But for most person as you write this is no danger.
And of course organic tea is more expensive.
I think the real caveat is for children here. I would not want my little one to consume any pesticides at all. We are all exposed to air born pollutants that we essentially have no control over. This is something that we can control – by drinking organic.
I agree pesticides will become a larger issue for the entire industry over the next few years. In the case of Celestial Seasonings, the laboratory may be independent, but if an investment group can benefit from alarming results, then I would want to have this retested and sponsored by a neutral party. Even if the laboratory is independent, sample handling is critical in such an experiment.
Ron
This is not meant to appear to approve of pesticides making it into our tea cups at any level, “allowable” or otherwise, but there is a financial game in play here. The same financial group tested Teavana teas, found the same damning results at about the same time that Starbucks was buying Teavana. Are the results flawed, possibly/probably not. Has the investment group learned that they can grab any tea companies inventory off the shelf, test it and find chemical or pesticide residue – even an “organic” tea perhaps? Yes they have. For the relatively modest cost of the testing fee, pick a company, short their stock, run the tests, get the incriminating results, send out a press release, make a ton of money off of a financial bet. The ethics of investment bankers vs. tea lovers/producers are at the opposite ends of the solar system.
I do understand what you’re saying Guy. The other side of financial nonsense, we’re left with “organic” teas that have pesticides on them. This is so very disturbing to me. Not sure what the solution is. You’re suggesting that most any tea would test this way – not sure how that can be? And if so, what can be done about it? HELP!!!!
The truth is you can find chemicals on every kind of food on this planet. When the residual amount exceeds certain level, we should be alarmed. Actually, most of the pesticides are not solutable in water, and we normally don’t eat the tea leaves(unless you are cooking with it, or drinking mocha).
When Eurofin test the pesticide residual, they test the amount of residue in the dry leaves, not in the tea soup. When they test the tea water, they would hardly find any residue.
Meanwhile, does the US FDA has a standard for the pesticide residual in tea?
Good question Lionel. Apparently the FDA wants to test the leaves but the big tea companies would prefer testing of the liquor for pesticides. I believe the safest test would be the leaves. Do we even want pesticides in our compost? My feeling is that organic tea should be pesticide free, both the leaves and the liquor. Is that an unreasonable expectation?
What’s amazing is that it doesn’t seem to matter what the issue is, even when people die of eating tainted meat in a fast food hamburger. If the companies are large enough and have a monster marketing machine, they roll right on. What’s the statistic?..60% of everything in the grocery store is from about 20 companies??? And even more serious, the growth of the ‘superfarm’ corporation owners. Our food supply is really going to be dependent on very few players in the future.
Michelle, if you have a personal Twitter account or do the blog’s there, you might want to follow @FoodTank (may have an underscore between the words, but you can find them). They Tweet a wealth of information on these types of topics.