Organic at RYOKU
Every RYOKU tea comes from certified organic cultivation in Japan. What that actually means and who checks it — here, without the label jargon.
Why organic matters especially with tea
RYOKU’s philosophy: what you consume every day should contain as few residues as possible. With tea that’s particularly relevant, because whatever is on the leaf ends up in your cup — whether you steep the leaf or drink it as a powder.
For most people, tea isn’t the occasional treat but a daily habit. A cup in the morning, one in the afternoon, for years. It’s exactly with products like these that it pays to look closely. That’s why certified organic cultivation isn’t an extra selling point for us, but the starting point.
Organic-certified in Japan: JAS
Our teas are certified to the Japanese organic standard JAS (Japanese Agricultural Standard, 有機JAS). Inspection is carried out by accredited bodies on site in Japan — that is, where the tea grows and is processed.
JAS covers, among other things: no synthetic pesticides or artificial fertilisers, conversion periods for the fields before the first organic harvest, separate processing and storage, and complete documentation from field to pack. Inspection happens annually on site, not by self-declaration. In Japan, only those who pass this check may carry the JAS seal.
You’ll find the certification details for each tea directly on the pack.
And in Switzerland
For tea to be sold as “organic” in Switzerland, the Japanese certification alone isn’t enough — the import is checked here too. In our case, that control runs through bio.inspecta, an accredited Swiss inspection body. It verifies that the goods really do come from certified cultivation, that the chain is documented, and that nothing was mixed or relabelled along the way.
RYOKU thereby meets the Swiss Organic Ordinance and may sell its teas as organic products. So it’s a double check: once in Japan for cultivation and processing, once in Switzerland on import.
Organic is more than what ends up in the cup
Organic cultivation isn’t only better for you at the far end of the chain. It’s also better for the farming families who work the fields every day, for the soil that should stay fertile for generations, and for the ecosystem around the tea gardens.
Japanese tea fields often lie on slopes between forests and watercourses. Whatever is applied there doesn’t stay on the field. For us, that’s reason enough.