Greenpeace has tested Lipton teas in Beijing and found excessive levels of toxic rare earths. They are not up to European quality standards. Lipton reacts that they are well within Chinese quality standards. Consumers should not worry. The rare earth must've been in the soil, there's nothing they can do about that.
The Chinese government states that the pesticides must be coming from nearby crops. It must've been blown over by the wind.
Microbloggers on Weibo (Chinese twitter) wonder how much pesticide is used for it to blow over and still be beyond European quality standards. Bloggers are worried.
A Chinese tea farmer states that he grows tea for Lipton. They usually buy it off season (summer & autumn) when the risk of diseases is bigger and much more pesticides needed. It's called rough tea. He usually doesn't get more than 20 yuan per kg of tea (€ 2.40).
The Ministry who issued the statement about the wind gets laughed at on Weibo. Lipton takes its products back.
The story doesn't end here. In the same two weeks coca cola has been found to use the water for washing the bottles to make the actual drink, chlorine in the coke as a result; gelatin has been found poisoned in huge amounts; certain medical pills are wrong; a addictive additive for pork that is widely used in restaurants to cover bad flavor and get customers to come back is discovered, high levels of toxic heavy metals in Shanghai's drinking water... etc. etc.
I say, bon apetit!
ps, scary that multinationals apply different quality standards in different countries.
pps, interesting that 18 other Chinese brands who also failed the tests weren't scrutinized by media. (according to Financial Times)
ppps, A Shanghainese student of history took a year off to make a website about food safety, even though in Chinese, the graphic is very telling, and clearly I'm not the only one who is concerned, 230,000 people looked at it so far. ZZCE is Mandarin and short for 'throw it out of the window'.
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