A communication from Supremo regarding our Company’s involvement in Organic integrity.
Organic commitment
The past few years have seen growing concerns in the European Food & Beverage industry around the presence of Glyphosate in Organic products.
Recently these concerns have translated to more consumer awareness but also to changes in legislations, either foreseen or already implemented. Whilst the EU as a governing body has not yet modified it's current approach some countries have started applying new regulations around the trade of Food & Beverages. This is particularly the case of Italy who recently started imposing testing for Glyphosate residues in all Organic cargo destined to import. Coffee is no exception and as a leading beverage we expect it will be put under much more scrutiny in the coming years.
Whilst we see the tightening of these measures as a potential constraint to business we also perceive these as an opportunity to showcase and reward the hard work of our supply chains on this topic, from raising awareness of farmers to equipping them with mechanized weed management tools the examples are many on how our dear partners in origin take the issue seriously and try to fight it. But the responsibility is not only theirs.
A growing number of our dear customers, of all sizes, have recently contacted us asking about Glyphosate and how we ensure our Organic coffees do not contain any. We have been exchanging on a one to one basis with each of them, often learning from them too and we hope the reassurance brought by Supremo to these enquiries will enable us all to continue aiming towards a truly Organic business for all. In the scope of these exchanges we have explained our past and our present work around the issue and have communicated a strong message which we hereby are pleased to share with the entire industry.
On basis of research led since 2018 Supremo has been able to:
- Rank various origins based on the risk factor these represent for Glyphosate.
- Issue it's Internal Policy for Organic coffees applying to how we handle all aspects of Organic coffee transactions. From the choice of suppliers to the documentation aspect.
- Grow it's Organic coffee business with very limited cases of coffee being tested above the Maximum Residue Limit.
- Budgetise a full year testing exercise with specific focus on two leading Organic producing origins namely Peru and Honduras.
It is this last point which we are pleased to write to you about today.
In partnership with it's supply chains Supremo has embarked on a mission to test 100% of samples of it's Organic purchases from Peru and Honduras for all contracts to be shipped in 2021 and this regardless of it being a contractual requirement of our customers.
Preparing for this exercise has required in-depth planning, software designing, and means a sacrifice of our team's time to handle the entire testing procedures with various EU based laboratories.
What we aim at achieving with this data collection is to have a clear map of where the risks further exist, not only in terms of producer / vendor but also in terms of seasonality, intensity of residue limits, and overall contamination rates versus volumes produced etc. This information once compiled and analysed will allow us to share with both our supply chains and our customers a wealth of knowledge enabling the entire value chain to get involved in better risk management, apply mitigation measures, and by doing so continue building a future made of genuine Organic consumption.
We aim at releasing a first batch of testing results by July and a full set by December. We will undoubtedly share these findings with you and most importantly voice our own analytical standpoint on the situation.
In the meantime we aim at continuing to execute our Organic transactions in full integrity of the product and remain at your disposal would you require further information.
The Supremo Team