Friday, October 08, 2004


another moment on the i.c.o.

i think what makes this page different from many other coffee websites (coffee geek, etc.) is that i often chat about larger coffee issues. i know it annoys some people, but hey! coffee's a big world -- the second-most-traded commodity and all that.

when i talk about this i.c.o. situation, i know a lot of people are still a tad confused. lemme explain. . .

it does seem at first abstruse. but the bottom line is this: when you go the store and buy hamburger, you expect it to be beef. and fairly decent beef, not offal or calves' feet ground up with fat and water.

there are rules that define nationwide the general parameters of what "hamburger" can be. we consumers rely on those.

wouldn't you like the same level of certainty with the coffee you buy? you'd like to know that the stuff labeled "100% pure coffee" is just that.

but if you buy some coffee products in the supermarket, or are offered coffee in certain food-service situations, you may not be getting delicious, pure coffee, but rather junk coffee, made with defective beans, moldy beans, fermented beans, bug-chewed beans. stuff like that.

part of re-joining the i.c.o. originally would have encouraged or even required the u.s.a. to update its coffee standards to protect consumers against this stuff by changing labelling laws so that this low-grade, poor-quality stuff would have to be called "coffee by-products."

just as dog food is labelled "meat by-products." and this is why the i.c.o. issue really matters to us normal coffee drinkers: otherwise millions of consumers think they are buying coffee "hamburger," yet are instead getting the coffee equivalent of "dog food!"

but commercial coffee -- those big multi-nationals responsible for the um, "coffee" you see in the cans and jars in the supermarkets, firms like p&g, sara lee, kraft, nestle, and i probably should mention tchibo -- resisted this labelling effort.

for probably obvious reasons. just as the scaa represents your local high-quality, specialty neighborhood roaster and coffeeshops, the nca represents these huge firms above, with their chief lobbyist being robert nelson.

the scaa and your local specialty roasters, retailers, and coffeeshop owners supported the so-called "coffee purity" labelling rules. they understand that we average coffee lovers will turn away from java unless it's high-quality and good-tasting.

while i was away, of course there was another i.c.o. meeting in london, about which scaa chief ted lingle so kindly posted. please see here for more background on this issue.

what was interesting was to read a little later on that week the news release that the nca's own robert nelson offered the planet, which somehow seemed not to mention lingle or the involvement of specialty coffee at all.

you'da thunk that the push to re-join the i.c.o. was completely the idea of commercial coffee! and naturally no mention was made of the purity or labelling rules.

that's because commercial coffee fought to ensure the labelling rules wouldn't really ever be implemented. now the purity effort is merely voluntary, unenforceable.

you don't have to be a raging cynic to know where that will lead -- nowhere. let me pause for a moment to note that actually i'm not against commercial coffee per se, and i still pray robert nelson finds his soul.

what i'm specifically against as a coffee drinker, what ted lingle is against as a coffee professional, what your local independent coffee guy is against as part of the passion of the livelihood, is the high level of defective beans in commercial coffee.

we all know commercial coffee used to be better; the red and blue cans used to be better; and with a commitment to higher quality, they can be better again.

so what did the u.s.a., and more specifically, the american coffee consumer gain by our re-joining the i.c.o.? see ted's post. . .

we know now at least america is part of the framework to help stabilize the coffee market and alleviate the worst effects of the world-price depression known as the "coffee crisis." the crisis harms the american consumer by also reducing the quality of the coffee we drink over time, not to mention the suffering it causes among coffee farmers and workers!

of course, when asked about these price issues, and thus the poverty and suffering in many coffee-growing communities, apparently robert nelson mouthed a sound bite about the market. . .the same market that is currently failing both farmer and consumer alike. and he said nothing about improving quality.

but in the absence of these purity rules, consumers have only once way to ensure that they are getting good coffee -- buy whole beans from your local independent roaster, retailer, coffeehouse or bean store, from people you can know and trust.

anyway, enough of this rant for this week. robert of jolly cafe has kindly sent me some his coffee -- the tuscan brand i couldn't seem to catch up with in italy -- and i'll be talking about that tomorrow!

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