Hello everyone. I’m Andy, a tea enthusiast.
In recent years, tea and food safety have become increasingly important topics.
From the tea garden to the tea cup, every step in the process is closely linked to food safety.
While this may sound abstract, there are many concrete concepts worth understanding.
Today, I’d like to share how tea factories ensure food safety.
➤ Key Factors Affecting Tea Food Safety
Food safety management is based on three core principles:
• PRP (Prerequisite Program)
• OPRP (Operational Prerequisite Program)
• CCP (Critical Control Point)
Let’s break down these concepts and explore how they are applied in the tea-making process.
➤ PRP: Establishing a Safe Foundation from the Source
The first step in food safety is ensuring the safety of the production environment and equipment. This is the core of PRP (Prerequisite Program).
For a tea factory, PRP covers the following key areas:
• Tea Garden Management
• Prevent pesticide cross-contamination and adopt eco-friendly farming practices to ensure tea leaves are not affected by heavy metals or pesticide residues.
• Equipment and Environmental Management
• Ensure that production equipment, tools, and work environments meet food safety standards to avoid cross-contamination.
• Prohibit pets from entering the tea factory to maintain hygiene.
• Personnel Hygiene Management
• Workers must follow basic hygiene rules, such as washing hands frequently, wearing hats, socks, and clean clothing, and avoiding smoking and chewing betel nuts.
Before the tea-making process begins, these foundational measures ensure that the tea leaves enter production in a safe state.
➤ OPRP: Precise Control at Critical Stages
OPRP (Operational Prerequisite Program) provides additional control over specific risk points to reduce food safety hazards. Examples include:
• Pesticide Residue Testing
• Before harvest, tea leaves must be tested to ensure pesticide residues meet safety standards. Although costly, this step is crucial for ensuring product safety.
• Foreign Matter Screening
• Manual sorting, air selection machines, or sieving machines remove impurities such as dried leaves, twigs, or foreign objects.
• During outdoor withering and throughout the entire production process, foreign matter must be continuously screened to ensure tea purity.
• Preventing Tea from Contacting the Floor
• From freshly picked tea leaves (tea buds) to the final product, tea should never come into contact with the floor. Instead, use pallets or plastic tarps instead of cardboard.
• Pallets should not be stepped on to prevent contamination.
These additional control measures ensure that tea remains pure and safe throughout processing.
➤ CCP: Critical Control to Ensure Safety Standards
CCP (Critical Control Point) refers to crucial stages in food safety management where improper control could pose health risks.
For tea factories, key CCPs include:
• Final Moisture Content of Tea Leaves
• For ball-shaped tea, moisture should be below 5%.
• For strip-shaped tea, moisture should be below 6% to prevent microbial growth.
• Foreign Matter Detection
• Before leaving the factory, tea must undergo foreign matter inspection, including metal and non-tea impurities, to prevent accidental ingestion.
In the tea-making process, CCP is the last line of defense, ensuring that tea leaves meet all safety standards before being shipped.
➤ How Do Tea Factories Implement CCP?
• Final Moisture Content of Tea Leaves
• Measured using a moisture analyzer, which must be regularly calibrated. The testing environment must be stable to avoid inaccurate results.
• Foreign Matter Detection
• Conducted using a metal detector, which should be calibrated regularly. Test strips must be used before and after operation to ensure the equipment is functioning correctly.
The monitoring frequency is typically per batch. For example:
• Tea leaf moisture content must be checked using destructive random sampling to ensure uniformity.
Sample representativeness is crucial, and sampling locations should cover the entire batch to prevent inaccurate readings caused by uneven moisture distribution.
• Metal detection is a non-destructive, continuous process where all tea must pass through the detection equipment. Therefore, maintaining equipment stability and sensitivity is essential.
Compared to metal detection, investing in a moisture analyzer is the most cost-effective and critical food safety measure for a tea factory.
Metal detection, on the other hand, can be handled byspecialized tea processing or packaging facilities.
A common mistake in CCP designation is relying on manual sorting, as “zero foreign matter” is an unmeasurable and difficult-to-record standard, making it ineffective as a control point.
➤ CQP: The Final Check for Quality
Beyond safety, CQP (Critical Quality Point) ensures the flavor, texture, and consistency of tea.
While CQP does not directly impact food safety,it determines the overall tea-drinking experience.
Like CCP, CQP should have measurable control parameters and recordable results. Examples include:
• Temperature and Humidity Control
• During the fermentation stage, temperature and humidity must be strictly regulated to ensure stable quality.
• Roasting Temperature
• Each batch of tea should be roasted at a consistent temperature to maintain flavor stability.
• Tea Leaf Density
• The final volume of tea leaves reflects the tightness of rolling. If the leaves are rolled too tightly, the flavor release may be negatively affected.
• Tea Leaf Moisture Content
• Excess moisture can cause tea to lose its original flavor more quickly.
• Packaging and Sealing
• Ensure proper sealing temperature and vacuum pressure, and choose appropriate oxygen absorbers.
• Package Weight
• Each tea package must meet the labeled weight requirements.
Some believe that aged tea is always better, but under CQP control, quality should meet consumer expectations rather than relying solely on aging.
For instance, consumers purchasing fresh and fragrant tea expect a fresh taste. Even if aging improves the flavor, it does not meet the consumer’s original expectation.
Meeting consumer expectations is more important than subjective sensory evaluations.
That’s all for this discussion! I hope this knowledge helps you better understand tea safety. See you next time!
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