Tea brands vow to improve conditions after damning BBC tea estate report
Tea brands including PG Tips, Tetley, Yorkshire Tea, and Twinings have vowed to improve the tea estates they buy from in India after a BBC investigation found "dangerous and degrading" working conditions.
According to BBC News today, in a report by Justin Rowlatt and Jane Deith, the joint investigation by Radio 4's File on Four and the British news channel found tea workers in Assam, north-east India, living in broken houses without nearly no sanitation or working toilets, and sometimes cesspools overflowing into houses.
One of the estates is question is owned by giant tea producer, McLeod Russel, which supplies tea to the companies PG Tips, Liptons, Tetley and Twinings. Unilever owns PG Tips and Liptons, and has said it takes the allegations seriously and will continue to work to "raise standards".
The producer admitted to the BBC that there is "a huge backlog of repairs", and that conditions were "not acceptable". Other estates implicated include Doomur Dulling, owned by the Assam Company.
The Indian Tea Association has also condemned the conditions, and said that decent housing and sanitation should form part of a tea worker's pay, although the Assam Company has called the BBC's findings "baseless and false".
Harrods, which also stocks tea from the affected estates, has removed Doomur Dulling tea from its shelves in response to the BBC findings, while Taylors of Harrogate said it was "investigating as a matter of urgency".
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