On 2008-04-22, niisonge wrote:

Standards in China are questionable compared to requirements here in
the US.

It seems it's not about Chinese producers being negligent. It seems,
rather it's a difference in regulations - both inside China, and
internationally. In China, you got federal regulations, provincial
regulations, and even industry regulations. That all makes everything
so complicated and confusing. Then there are international standards
that must be adhered to. So that makes everything different.

Well I think what the person who posted that comment might have been
referring to (at least in part) is the corruption (and ease of forging
documents or lying about a tea's origin) prevalent in China. You're
probably in a better place than I am to tell how true that is, but my
understanding is that it's pretty easy to either forge documents or
bribe officials (or simply mislead them) with the organic regulations in
a lot of parts of China.

As in the US, standards like USDA and the EU standards are a mixed bag.
They are theoretically pretty stringent, which helps a little bit with
ensuring that the standards mean something and that consumers know what
they're getting into, but they favor large producers and make it much
more difficult for small operations to compete. The fact that they
typically require a transitional period where no pesticides are used
helps ensure that there aren't residual pesticides in the ground.

If you're buying locally, it makes sense to know your farmers, and trust
that they're telling you the truth about their farming methods...
however, for those of us in the US buying tea produced in other
countries, that's difficult because the tea passes through a lot of
hands, and any of those people can easily lie or pass on a lie. Even
when buying directly from the producer, and even if you've visited the
place where the tea is grown, it's never really possible to know for
sure unless you're watching the tea every minute of every day.

Unfortunately (and possibly for some of the reasons mentioned), most of
the certified organic tea I've had has not been very tasty. I try to
just go by a tea's taste and how it makes me feel. Also, if there are
bug bites, that's usually a good sign (and for Oriental Beauty, they're
actually necessary).

btw, there have been a couple of long threads about pesticides and
toxins in tea. The two I remember are the two starting with message-ids
om
. com. Worth a read for
those who didn't read them the first time around.

Ankit mentioned (in one of those threads) the possibility of doing tests
of samples if anyone wanted to send him some. However, he said they need
about 250g of leaf to do the tests, which definitely dampened my
enthusiasm... most of the teas I like enough to want to test, I don't
want to give up 250g of.

w