21/10/1995
Eng. Mohamed Abdel Hay El Shnawany submitted a working paper titled “Tea, the King of Light Beverages, and Protection of the Consumer'”. The paper covers several pivots: Tea cultivation and industry, chemical composition and ingredients of tea, iron filings in tea and discussion of standard specifications, the tea market in Egypt, tea fraud and the Consumer Protection Association. (Available in Arabic – German in PDF )
The paper revealed sources of tea pollution caused by iron filings such as: – During transportation of green leaves, from farms to the factory, nails and nuts may fall from trailers into picking baskets. – During the wilting process, nails, wire and iron pieces may combine with leaves, especially if the net is made of wire. – Rust pieces from uneven ceilings are considered a pollution source. – During the manufacturing process by the CTC system, machine cylinders rub together, resulting in iron pieces mixing with tea, especially if cylinders are made from low grade types of iron, the sharpening process of cylinders was bad, or cylinders were installed incorrectly. – During the process of cleaning machines, floors and oxidation equipment, in which steel wool is used, wire pieces, which adhere to surfaces, may combine with the tea. – During the drying process, iron pieces, resulting from rubbing nibs and the trays transporting tea also combine with the tea. – During the grading process, wire pieces separated from the sieves mix with tea, the process of rubbing the tea in breaking machines and fine tea machines also results in some iron pieces, being transported into the tea. The research summarized some specific points proposed for protecting the consumer regarding the tea commodity: The supervisory bodies in ports must have experts to evaluate tea to determine its quality level, consequently customs can be estimated by a studied method which depends on the correct bases of conformity with reality, commodity under quarantine by customs is prohibited, stressing control on tea factories to be at the highest level of cleanliness as there are some tea packing factories established which are unlicensed, control on storage of food commodities in which tea is stored away from contaminated materials such as soap and oil, a dry area is necessary because humidity causes damage to the tea color and flavor, media control of tea plays a great role in making the citizen aware of manipulators, protects him and prohibits the use of names and trademarks that are similar to famous ones. The Consumer Protection Association travels to markets taking samples from various types of tea and warns consumers of bad types.
