Elephant Friendly™ Tea standards for certification were released in November, 2019. The Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network, in partnership with the University of Montana, has released the new certification standards that provide science-backed benchmarks to ensure that best practices are applied in tea agriculture regions overlapping with endangered elephant movement areas. The standards can be viewed HERE
Reducing the risks of elephant mortalities and injury, securing safe passage for elephants between habitat and water sources through agricultural lands, maintaining landscape connectivity and habitat availability, and ensuring that human-elephant conflict management plans support both elephant conservation and human well-being, the new standards are aimed at supporting the long-term conservation of the globally endangered Asian elephant species. The Certified Elephant Friendly™ logo on a tea brand guarantees that the tea was grown under conditions that meet these new standards, a unique and groundbreaking effort in the tea industry. We hope you will join us in this journey along with tea growers and their communities, together we can ensure that “no harm is done to elephants in the making of tea.”