A question we get asked from time to time is ‘Do you sell organic coffee?’.
One day, I’ll be able to give a straight yes or no answer to one of these questions, but today is not that day.
Having said that, the answer is a simple, if unsatisfying ‘no’.
- The answer is ‘no’ even though many of the coffee sacks we take delivery of say ‘organic coffee’ on them.
- The answer is ‘no’ even though we know that many (if not the vast majority) of coffee farmers we buy from practice organic farming. You can read more about that here if you’re interested.
Why no then? ...and now we get to another simple bit.
According to the UK government:
"You are breaking the law if you call a food product ‘organic’ if it has not been inspected and certified." UK Government Organic Food Labelling
Despite the fact that we are a very small business, we are set to launch up to 50 different coffees from lots of different countries this year - ‘organic certification’ is not a viable option for us. Different countries have different rules and standards around organic foods, and navigating that stuff would likely be a full-time job in itself.
I would encourage anyone asking ‘do you sell organic coffee?’ to spend 10 minutes reading this excellent article instead, which does a much better job than I could ever do of explaining why it might not be the best question to be asking.
