Kusmi Tea has withdrawn its chamomile tea from sale. The company is awaiting EFSA’s opinion on the alkaloids detected. Returning products to the store is desirable, she says.
A “chamomile” to relax. The expression has passed into everyday language, as these infusions are so successful. But the herbaceous plant is not all good. A German consumer association, the Foundation Warentest, sounds the alarm on the sachets sold by the manufacturer Kusmi Tea. They are contaminated by weeds with potentially toxic effects, report our colleagues from BFM Business.
Doses below the maximum recommended threshold
Chamomile in itself is not poisonous. But when collected, wild plants can accompany the harvest. This is the explanation provided by the tea maker. The only problem is that some of these weeds contain a substance, pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which has been the subject of alerts by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA).
Kusmi Tea specifies on Facebook that “this substance is not subject, according to the Warentest Foundation itself, to any legal maximum threshold”. In fact, only recommendations were issued on this subject. The producer therefore shows white paw. “Kusmi Tea chamomile is well below the maximum threshold currently recommended at European level. “
The argument is unstoppable. But the German consumer association is more suspicious. One sachet of chamomile tea contains 161 micrograms of PA. That’s 380 times the dose normally ingested by an adult, according to Warentest. The recommended thresholds are 0.42 micrograms maximum for a 60 kg adult, 0.11 micrograms for a 16 kg child.
A precautionary withdrawal
“Immediate poisoning by an adult or a child is unlikely, but eating them regularly carries a chronic risk of liver cirrhosis or tumor,” said the testers. EFSA confirms this in a notice from 2011 : pyrrolizidine alkaloids have a possible carcinogenic and genotoxic action. In other words, they can cause cancer, and damage the DNA and genetic material of cells. According to Warentest, hepatic poisoning is also associated with these substances.
As a precaution, Kusmi Tea preferred to withdraw its chamomile teas from the European market and from its website. “We are going to refer to EFSA for more details,” the manufacturer also announced on its Facebook page. The objective: to obtain a threshold to be respected. In the meantime, Kusmi Tea said this Thursday on Twitter that a return to the store of these products was “desirable”. “Bring it back (the chamomile) to your shop for reimbursement or for another product,” he concludes.
@beignetsugar Yes of course. Return to store desirable. Bring it back to your store for a refund or for another product
– Kusmi Tea (@KusmiTea) Jan. 19, 2017
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