So what do customers want when they buy organic? How can the producer really prove the product is organic? Especially in today's world of global commerce and trade, these questions are complicated even more with language barriers, not to mention just a good old lack of knowledge of how other countries function.
Though, that is not much of an excuse, if you ask me. An acquaintance of mine is a green tea producer in Thailand. To be exact, they produce Jade Green Tea, Yun Bi Oolong Tea, and Ruan Tze Oolong Tea, which is not all green tea, technically. If I am a buyer in the United States and want organic tea, and regularly buy tea from (let's say) China and Thailand, I should do everything possible to find out the process and standards of certification in the countries from which I buy.
More than likely, it would not even be that hard. In this particular case, it is the Department of Agriculture of the Thai government itself which provides the organic certification. If I wanted to buy his tea and it was clearly better than other producers, how hard is it to contact the Thai government to receive the criteria for Thai tea producers to receive "organic certified" status? If the seller told me himself, I would have to doubt it anyway. The only way to know for sure is to find out myself.
The real object of organic certification is to rid the consumable product of "chemical pesticides and fertilizers". In reality, the Thai government certification is already there, but the international buyers have not quite caught on yet.
