In hamburg. To contain a large in germany beverage has seen a surge in popularity particularly tea from india. But most consumers arent aware of the living and working conditions on many plantations there or of the wide reaching consequences for tea workers exposed to toxic pesticides. The children who are born are. Growth and poorly norrish and as i said the infant market is high what is the true cost of da indian plantation workers the ones paying the price. This is a high quality tea tasting course in hamburgs district such events are a growing trend professional teacher used to handle schmidt holds workshops almost every week in the autumn. To teach more and more people in germany are getting into team. People used to be quite happy with tea bags but now they want more they want to experience t. And t. Is becoming more multifaceted a lot more exciting were at the start of a really great Team Movement that site no hint of a tieback here aficionados brew tea leaves according to a very strict ritual. Many do not expect such delightful a diverse aromas and tastes to unfold on my palate. In my really surprise there is such a range of flavors. For me its a multifaceted pleasure and think it does my started drinking more team and i enjoy. Tea enthusiastic are now prepared to pay a lot of money for high quality leaves thats a new trend. High quality cost between twenty and thirty euros for one hundred grams and the most expensive tea that you can buy usually costs around fifty to sixty euros. So again over to you can cost up to six hundred euros a lucrative business that thomas and catherine gas and also profiting from they work for take companion a german business that prides itself on buying the best quality tea directly from plantations in india cutting out the middleman and bang produces fair prices. But hammock at least two trips a year to darjeeling. The district in northern india lies in the foothills of the himalayas and converse about three thousand square kilometers. Has grown in darjeeling at an altitude of between six hundred and two thousand two hundred metres above sea level. And experts are convinced that it is this unique location that makes star joining t. V. So special. And its the Southern Side of him in a list a Steep Mountain area with intense exposure to sun. The leaves grow more slowly than they do in lower regions and the aroma is very special its what makes studying said distinctive. Which results. With that it isnt called the champagne of teas for nothing darjeeling isnt just the best is also the most expensive tea in the world and thats also partly because everything has to be done by hand because of the steep terrain so the city comes at a price of course but you could also face up. Under some circumstances one would think that the region would be thriving. Montage filling city doesnt seem to be benefiting from the profits of the tea tray. Its a typical indian city noisy and poverty stricken. Unemployment is high. In the city center a slum where Migrant Workers live. Is the head of the biggest he Workers Union in darjeeling he says neither the region nor his members are benefiting from the high tea prices consumers pay in germany. Gardens after. The getting the one in the park it would appear this is a rise of one little rise if you want simple right you have to be minimum one hundred to do that with you who want to go second right if you want to drive you up to be one of the good we are demanding the living with. A living wage would be twice the current going rate which is the equivalent of less than one euro seventy cents a day. Thats water heater top and amrita british walk run for their back breaking work became tea on the show among plantations. Mostly i dont know them and i own about forty five euros a month i cant make ends meet with wages like that we have to Pay School Fees by school books medicine when were is ill and lots of other things. Work starts every morning at seven. To hold beliefs instructor the hands i have both hands free. And your Family Member to the taking she might not be a complicated job but its extremely tiring we continually having to walk up and down the mountainside there is a ditch isnt she drops the mountain terrain is very steep and that makes our work so painstaking. Inspiration that women have to pick eight kilos of teens or their daily way in high season that can rise to up to twenty kilos a day and the plantation supervisors check very carefully to see if amrita and rohit are the breach that targets. Women have no hope of finding better paid work up here in the mountains and they are trapped by their jobs their hearts belong to the plantation owners in order to live here they have to work here. I mean to bitch was house is simple but she has the band necessities piped water for example. Which she shares with other families. As the going to drink. After work she helps a nine year old daughter with her homework even though shes exhausted at the end of the day im ready to wants to make sure her daughter has a better future. Now any School Education is vital for my daughter to get a good job i dont want my child to become a typical as well work in the tea garden is extremely hard and tiring but. Its also clear to the managers of the sharma group that wages and working conditions need to improve. Theres been a steady drop in the number of young people prepared to work under existing conditions in the Tea Plantations the Younger Generation obviously theyre more educated and they get a little learning more and they dont want to hang around here into this job because they consider blocking over looking at the plot is another media job so that. As soon as they do get out of the eighty industry or people are moving slowly so its going to get more and more difficult to get experienced people who are. Cutting gas our time thomas voice from take companion are also aware of the tea pickers financial predicament into our chilling spawn taishan but they dont really feel responsible. This is a had we can do very little to influence things directly. The pick is the unionized and the way its negotiations take place between the unions the people who run the two gardens and the government. And the tie and we dont have any influence on those negotiations on the kind im for self ever. Pretty much and say very not responsible for the workers wages. The pickers wages need to rise significantly according to suresh sober. To. Look and look at the them had been no word this is a big problem if you give the three hundred rupees as a living with. The. Not worrying other frightening korean regard but for the moment at least the sherman groups facility has enough workers this is where the buyers from germany check this quantity of the first harvest the socalled first flush. Indian suppliers are keen to cater to their needs. Or wants it all but most of a frame does he think he is organic to going into the German Market. Equally important markets would be japan and the us which is the emerging force but youre going to definitely is a very important. Most of the machinery had dates back to the British Colonial era the age of the plant doesnt influence the quality of the tea. Thomas inspects the leaves. He checks the smell flavor and color. All of these factors are important for the past thirty years of oyster has followed this method to find the best quality tastes. Good to look at the all is the sort of the highest grades are holy fifteen s get the. Then there are other brokenly finis like this one. Then theres the typical teabag quality this crumbly stuff here is the soul in the whole the fifties are the highest grade of tea and normally the most expensive to lower grades of tea have less aroma to follow orders. So tea banks dont compare well thats why thomas and catherine gas out only order only twenty but they have other reasons for ordering directly from the producers. This is to just darjeeling tea is very very frequently faked is some forty thousand tons of tea or sold worldwide as darjeeling here although only ten thousand tonnes are produced at most. There are clearly Companies Across the world that sell fake see these as that of course also has a negative effect on prices worldwide its a huge problem for people here and it isnt possibly. Can fake darjeeling also be found in germany. Chiles from darjeeling have a unique chemical fingerprint. For scientists here in a low bar entry in southern germany a checking a number of tea samples taken off the shelves of german supermarkets to see if they do in fact bad and fingerprint. Strontium isotopes are among the things that theyre looking for a certain proportion of this metal is typical of soils in darjeeling. This image the ones who believe it now is an element that tells us about the geology and found in a particular place of production the results of the strontium isotope analysis have proved beyond doubt that all t. Samples must comes from the darjeeling region. So the tea on sale in german supermarkets really does come from darjeeling no facts that show up in the. Track. The tea brands ordered processes have clearly worked here. But the lab results do not reveal anything about local production conditions. There are various certification labels that aim to ensure ethical production standards fair trade Rain Forest Alliance and all claim to guarantee the source of their products. Germanys major t. Brands boast these seals take on a. Mass murder. And take all sales certified products. Fair trade strives to ensure a fair wage and better working conditions Rainforest Alliance pledges to conserve biodiversity and ensure Sustainable Livelihoods beauties and also stands for Sustainable Farming and better working conditions but do these Certification Programs really deliver on their promise. We visit as the biggest growing area in india. On the edge of this state in the countrys extreme northeast lies the tom gonna go on t. V. Plantation two belongs to the sham on group. Stage also supplies the German Market and has been certified by the fair trade beauty zat and Rain Forest Alliance programs. B. C. Or should bring benefits to the workers too high a price that consumers pay for fair trade tea for example should translate into higher wages for the team because thats the promise at least. This is how bad promise is interpreted in tom gonna go. We give the best blow cause we used to block. Any you need to get will it ever reach theres a let down we have distributed a bunch of us to live in what was. There. And how many of us are young but here say oh yes it is six. Eleven particularly industrious employees receive bicycles as a reward the remaining one thousand two hundred seventy five go empty handed. And yet the tears state is like one big family according to a manager clear the mayor the entire time i go out the. We need the love of the workers we talk about our t. We talk about our views. And you see a lot of Smiling Faces now and i feel to get them a medic in the car to get their own way in the car we need the love of. Our work inside the. Magic vision. Well it sounds good but when the manager is out of earshot welkers thomas a very different story though the tongue going to go on plantation has a clutch of certification labels life in his heart for fear of losing their jobs the workers want to remain anonymous. In this and our hearts are made from bamboo and mud and they completely falling apart we also dont have clean Drinking Water just wells that we dug ourselves. We dont have proper w. C. S. Just latrine pit there is no sewage system here the water simply drains into the ground. Beneath if we try to complain to the management they let us wait all day long and then tell us that the manager doesnt have time to see us. Florence min is aware of the hardships faced by ti workers he works for a christian Aid Organization called save a kendra that works to protect their rights i mean regularly visits families living on the states. In fact we are not allowed. Outside. The best time because now they are nobody and no one is there in the during the day they were. Monitored and we have to. Pay. Lawrence min has to seize his chance almost all families living on a certified plantation are facing the same problem. The man hearts built by the workers are in an appalling state of disrepair most dont have electricity or functioning toilets theres no clean Drinking Water and yet it is the tea estate that is responsible for meeting those basic needs that is the law in india. Today said dr but still this is somebody. In the serene and there is no current it is very dangerous with a lot of snakes all around we see the sweet the base of the thought i let you have to beat the behind which is open which is a breathing release of the mosque in the malaria the duty of the management to clean the toilet all the family here own they use these. Human waste from the dream seeps into the ground untreated and contaminate the ground water the only source of Drinking Water for the tea pickers and their families. This is a one we just not provided by their company. This is they have installed by themselves theyve got a lot of water borne diseases even drinking this water they may get a diarrhoea and also warm because this is not good water but people have to manage because there are no other ways children are particularly threatened by contaminated water and on hygiene and conditions and yet despite these conditions Rainforest Alliance beauty sand and fair trade decided to certify the tongue going to go until state Police Families have not profited from fair trade Price Premium and work but not received cycle. North theyve been gas cylinder and all plates cups nothing they have received all. Right we can see that container. Florence follows the workers into the dark heart of the fair trade benefit for this family attend the holding bronx and some of the workers around located right rations by their employers because they are not paid a living wage is this is a meal intended for three people washed down with some tea. With lot of thought feel their stock markets food. Nutrition theres more housing and an absence of hygiene its the children who are hardest hit by the miserable Living Standards on t. Estates. Professor and a kumar dattch can confirm that he is head of medicine at Assam Medical College and hospital in dibrugarh which treats the workers and their families. More children die in india than in any other parts of the world and the same is true in that the that and this is. What i as i said is the primary cause and sanitation is another cause is the Garden Community the children who are born are it darted in their growth and poorly noreast and as i said the infant market is. A plantation that boasts several good standard cereals yet whether workers and their families live in inhumane conditions. Even though the Certification Programs promise higher wages social justice and better working conditions how can i. Fairtrade responded with a written statement without a doubt we are repeatedly confronted by massive problems in our. Polling out of the tea sector and would only make the situation on the ground even more difficult. Rainforest alliance conceded in so far as they are confirmed by our own auditors some of the grievances you depict will lead to the decertification of the plantations in question. Was the only label to take immediate action. Our staff in india have inspected the situation at the time going to go on t. Estate and submitted their evaluation as conditions there evidently remain inadequate and require further investigation we have no option but to suspend the certification of the tongue going to go on to restate with immediate effect. So how do industry insiders view these standards seals. The Marketing Tool thats looking at it a lot of the Companies Buying these they will only if its good for the certified and so on and so forth so we do accordingly and. Thats an approach that does the tea workers little good tom going to go on is not the only state with such problems similar conditions exist on almost all of the certified states in our sample. Like here for example many workers live in decrepit housing even though estate owners are legally required to keep living quarters in good repair their neglect has forced employees to build new hearts for themselves. But. The company have. To laugh at. If. The not ha ha b. Plantation has been awarded seals of approval by the Rainforest Alliance and u. T. Sad yet the water here is also much too dirty to drink. Other people here dont have any choice that constructed filters out of metal and sand that such contraptions dont eliminate hazardous germs. Bridge on plantation is located just a few kilometers away its t. Is also certified by the Rainforest Alliance. The workers here spray pesticide on the crops without protective clothing and without masks. We were promised protective equipment a long time ago but we still havent received any. Chemicals enter the workers bodies through their skin and lungs the possible effects cases of acute poisoning and devastating Long Term Health consequences. That is why a lot of this is related problems they dont come to our college and this mission little the neurologic do but we do find them and not only these people who were working in the garden but the people who are living just near the gardens these insisted the sides are they fall on the ground they are they go deep into the ground and they can contaminate the Drinking Water itself. In as homes humid climate pesticides are widely used to stop insects or funguses from wiping out crops not just in this teeny state certified by Rain Forest Alliance the workers across our sound use pesticides without basic protection gear. For example here on the d. Com tear state. In both called garden. And on the man just three plantation. It would. It also has a number of good standard sales to its name a supervisor indicates where the workers have used pastor science florence min wants to find out how heavily contaminated the plants are. So he takes samples. Not just here but also from four other tier states in assam. In germany for tea leaves samples were tested for pesticide content along with samples of imported tea brands sold in german stores. To avoid forced of all week salmon tea picked on location in india all of the samples contain pesticides one pesticide even exceeded permitted limits then we examined supermarket here too we found pesticides in all the samples so pesticides can be detected in the product even after the t. Is processed through. All of the teas tested contained pesticide residues eight different types intakes friend mangalam alarm some of those chemicals are not licensed for use in germany in one of the samples collected by florence men the lab tests found a pesticide thats also banned in t. Farming in india. Toxicology professor at one mars or says the threat posed to human health by the detected pesticides will depend on the degree of exposure. Not traditional substance and of course these substances arent meant to harm people but they are substances that cant necessarily distinguish between the nervous system of an insect and a human so humans can also be affected if theyre exposed to higher concentrations good like a pastor side levels we found in a sample from the hymn bridge on plantation they exceeded the legal limit try a factor of eight even though the estate is Rainforest Alliance certified. As it is at the tea tasting in hamburg unnerved by revelations that many expensive fine teas are contaminated with pesticides. And you think she is something healthy and that drinking it is good for you so i find it pretty alarming its definitely disconcerting. For a bottle of mattick but im not surprised. Cast aside residues in tested samples and the ambassador dubious. Benefits of quality seals the global tea trade has many losers including european consumers but no one has been left more vulnerable by its success than t. V. Walkers toiling in the estates of darjeeling and. The fast pace of life in the digital. Shift as the lowdown on the web showing new developments and providing useful information the wittiest finds and interviews with makers and users. Should next on t. W. Land be our fighters want to start families to become farmers or engineers every one of them has a plan for your children. So nothing is just on the children who have already been the boy and those that will follow are part of a new process. You know they could be the future of. Granting opportunity global news that matters d. W. Made some minds. Weve. Shifted living in the digital age coming up photogenic city. Chill dissection. Im just super mario crash goals but controversial
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