China groans over ‘toxic’ tea leaves

(Ecns.cn) -- A tea grower in Fujian Province, one of the most important tea farming regions in China, says he never drinks tea made with his own leaves.

If a farmer won't eat from his own crop, it's probably a sign that something is out of place.

And so, following recent scandals, China's tea suppliers are struggling. In some key areas, prices of leaves have dropped by more than 30 percent, reports the Xinmin Weekly.

The market for "Iron Buddha" oolong tea, long valued for its health benefits, has been especially depressed since Greenpeace claimed three months ago that ingredients in Lipton tea products were tainted with pesticides.

Investigations found that the "highly toxic" pesticide residues in Lipton teas were well within Chinese standards – but the damage had already been done.

Agricultural pesticide use in China is hardly news. But when it comes to tea production, Chinese people are particularly sensitive: tea has been central to the culture for its health benefits for thousands of years.

Wang Jing, a Greenpeace food and agriculture campaigner, tested 18 kinds of tea products manufactured by nine Chinese tea brands between December 2011 and January 2012. She found that all the samples contained at least three types of pesticide residue.

According to Wang, tea manufactured by the Richun brand contained 17 types of pesticides, some of which are banned for tea production in China.

Eleven of the teas, including jasmine tea produced by Wuyutai and Zhangyiyuan (as well as green tea produced by Ten Fu Tea), were found to contain methomyl. Four types of oolong tea from Richun and Bama contained endosulfan, while green tea produced by Hainan Nongken contained fenvalerate.

All of those pesticides are banned, and may impede fertility, harm unborn children or cause inheritable genetic damage.

The China Tea Marketing Association attempted to ease public concern by saying that Greenpeace's accusations were based on pesticide residues measured by EU standards, which are higher than China's.

It said that the EU doesn't usually produce tea ingredients, and China's standards for pesticide residue levels were made in full accordance with principles set down by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the food consumption habits of Chinese people.

And according to Xinmin Weekly, the use of pesticides in tea cultivation is to some degree necessary, since diseases and insects can damage up to 70 percent of a tea grower's crop.

Moreover, the use of pesticides involves labor and other expenses, so tea growers will not generally spray their crops indiscriminately.

Yet the situation is worse than many people know. Statistics from the Institute of Tea Research at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences show that more than 98 percent of the tea produced in China contains pesticides.

Iron Buddha oolong and other scented teas are the most affected. They usually grow in higher temperatures and are more likely to attract insects, so they must be treated with heavy pesticide spray, said an expert on tea growing.

Jasmine tea, a favorite in Beijing, is also problematic. It has become common knowledge in the industry that pesticide levels in jasmine tea are very high.

China has imposed standards for pesticide residue levels in tea for many years, but weak supervision has resulted in irregular use, says the Xinmin Weekly.

Only a limited number of pesticides are covered by Chinese standards, and some lack guidelines for how much should be used. As a result, tea growers are using untested pesticides to dodge supervision, a practice that is difficult to detect.