“Set your heart at ease and enjoy Chinese tea.”
Food safety has been an issue lately in China. Under these circumstances a recent test made by Hong Kong’s Consumer Council comes rather timely. The Consumer Council is Hong Kong’s consumer protection body. It is funded by the HK government, with which it works in close collaboration, although it “enjoys total independence in formulating and implementing its own policy”.
The Consumer Council tested 46 samples of Wulong (乌龙) tea found on the Hong Kong marketplace for lead and pesticides residues. Out of these tested samples one item exceeded the national standard for lead residues and one other item exceeded the standard for pesticide residues. All the other tested teas had results within the nationally set limit.
The Council also insists that one would need to drink much more than what the average tea consumer drinks to feel the effects of the exceeding residues.
If you want to be on the safe side, don’t brew your tea too long (the samples with the highest values were brewed for half an hour) and don’t eat the tea leaves. Actually if you have some high quality Longjing (龙井), you would miss something, from my point of view, if you wouldn’t eat the occasional leaf that slips in your mouth as they are absolutely delicious and tender.
In the words of the English version of the press release: “Otherwise, set your heart at ease and enjoy Chinese tea.”
As with with all goods, tea comes in different prices and qualities. Most of the time there is a reason why one tea sample is more expensive than another sample from the same tea variety. Many tea plantations in China are now either completely turning towards organic production or at least have a part of their production fulfil the criteria needed to be labelled organic. They see that otherwise it will become very hard for them to export their products. But of course all this is reflected in the price of the end product.
Chinese sources: Lead and pesticide residues detected in tea leaves and teabags; 香港消委会抽查市面茶叶茶包 两款样本含铅超标
