It is the second most widely consumed beverage in the world but is so much more than a drink. With far-reaching, deep-rooted cultural and economic impacts, tea is a major source of income for the regions in which it is grown and has many powerful health-boosting properties such as facilitating weight loss and stress reduction.
The theme of this year’s International Tea Day is “Resilient, sustainable and healthy”, which serves to raise awareness of the important role that tea plays in tea-growing economies, its many health benefits and the need to promote sustainable production.
ISO has more than 30 standards dedicated to tea that help facilitate this through establishing minimum levels of quality and harmonizing the measurement of contents and substances. These include standards for the determination of caffeine or polyphenols, definitions of various teas, such as green, black or white, and sampling procedures, with other standards under development for oolong and matcha tea.
New standards recently developed include ISO 18447 for the determination of theaflavins in black tea and ISO 18449, which defines the terms for classifying and assessing green tea for commerce based on appearance, aroma and taste parameters.
ISO International Standards for tea are developed by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 34, Food products, subcommittee SC 8, Tea, the secretariat of which is held by BSI, ISO’s member for the UK. They are available from your national ISO member or through the ISO Store.