Unified tea safety standards benefit small-scale tea farmers

Tea did not originally come in decorated canisters or neat tea bags. It comes from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, and more than 50 countries currently grow tea, but there are four main growing regions——China, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka. In these regions, tea plants must withstand numerous natural enemies——fungi, bacteria and insects such as butterflies, moths, scale insects and nematodes. To maximise output, tea growers use certain chemicals and pesticides to control pests, but if large amounts of residue remain during the later processing of tea, this can pose a potential hazard to consumers.

Historically, the tea value chain was dominated by large tea plantations backed by governments, but this has changed, as smallholder farmers have become the main producers in today's increasingly globalised tea trade. At present, in Sri Lanka and Kenya, more than 70% of national tea output comes from smallholder farmers, and interestingly, the tea gardens they own cover less than 3 hectares.

This trend is understandable, because tea production is very attractive to smallholder farmers. Although tea plants take 2 to 3 years to mature, they can then continue producing tea for 30 years or even longer. Moreover, tea production can bring year-round work and income, and requires relatively little investment.

Strict regulations put pressure on smallholder farmers. Global demand for tea consumption is growing rapidly, with an annual growth rate of up to 5%, partly because of rising per capita incomes in China, India and other emerging economies. This has led to large growth in tea production, exports and consumption, and has pushed market prices to record highs. However, many problems have also emerged.

There are strict limits on chemical residues in tea after harvest, and some tea-producing countries consider compliance with these relevant regulations to be somewhat challenging. Although importing countries set “maximum residue limits” as food safety standards, they often set these standards without fully understanding the actual dangers they may pose to consumers, and compliance with these standards is particularly difficult for small-scale tea farmers.

Smallholder farmers tend to use cheaper chemicals, which usually means older brands, and in many cases producers have not updated their product guidelines explaining how to meet the latest safety standards. As a result, importing countries estimate residue limits on their own, and the resulting limits are often far below the safety limits actually needed, and such standards often make it very difficult for small-scale tea farmers to comply. Moreover, because importing countries set their own maximum residue limit standards, exporting producers must provide written materials proving that their tea meets the requirements of every destination country to which they export. Even growers who have no pest problems and therefore use no chemicals still need to spend time and money providing written materials to prove compliance with the relevant regulations.

Unified standards support smallholder farmers. Because safety standards were introduced at the same time as the number of small-scale tea producers was growing, these problems became even harder for the tea industry to solve. In 2001, as a subsidiary body of the Committee on Commodity Problems, the FAO Intergovernmental Group on Tea decided to seek a solution and proposed an initiative that gave priority to close cooperation among tea-producing countries, importing countries, traders, committees, associations and other organisations. Through the Working Group on Maximum Residue Limits, the Intergovernmental Group on Tea coordinated with the Codex Alimentarius Commission and other standard-setting bodies, working to unify standards among tea-importing countries. Over the following decade, the Intergovernmental Group on Tea enabled producing countries and importing countries to understand each other's problems, unified the various pesticide residue limits of major importing countries, and strengthened communication links between government regulatory authorities and the tea trade.

In addition to the Working Group on Maximum Residue Limits, the Intergovernmental Group on Tea has other members responsible for addressing issues that are very important to both small-scale tea farmers and industrial-scale growers, including organic tea production requirements and prompting the tea industry to respond to changes in growing conditions caused by climate change.

Overall, the FAO Intergovernmental Group on Tea's work on unifying maximum residue limits has addressed the safety concerns of consumers and has also reduced the cost of meeting safety standards. From a food security perspective, this is particularly important for major tea-exporting countries such as Sri Lanka and Kenya. These two countries import 1 billion US dollars worth of food each year, but their tea export earnings can fully offset these costs.