Taking a big gulp of pesticides with your organic, immune-support tea isn’t something most tea-drinkers would expect, but according to a new lawsuit that is exactly what happened to imbibers of Yogi Tea’s Echinacea Immune Support Tea.
East West Tea Company, better known as Yogi Tea, has been hit with a lawsuit accusing it of not alerting consumers on the tea’s packaging that it could, and did, contain pesticides, an issue that was brought to consumers’ attention after the company recalled almost 55,000 packs of the tea.
Yogi tea drinker and New York resident Marie Kaatz filed the proposed class action lawsuit against the company, accusign it of failing to disclose the risk of pesticide contamination, undermining its “Immune Support” claim and posing “serious and life-threatening adverse health consequences” to consumers.
She argues that the company undertook “false, deceptive, and misleading” advertising by not saying anywhere on the labeling the tea could contain pesticides, and that she and many other consumers would not have bought it if they had known the truth.
Kaatz lawsuit follows a large recall in which Yogi pulled 54846 packs of the echinacea tea from the shelves in March after it discovered, “as part of routine audit procedures,” that the tea contained “unexpected traces of pesticides.”
“While Yogi does not use pesticides – buying only to Organic Specifications that do not allow conventional pesticide use – we exist within a complex supply chain network where not everyone values organic practices in the same way that we do,” the company said in a statement to consumers. Essentially, the company claims the pesticides got into the tea from a neighboring farm using pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
Kaatz claims in the lawsuit that the remedy through the recall, where consumers had to return the tea to the place of purchase for a refund, was “designed to reach very few people and designed to benefit very few of the consumers who purchased the product.”
“The class action remedy is superior to Defendant’s failed recall in every conceivable fashion,” she argues.
The Yogi Tea lawsuit highlights how organically-labeled tea can still be susceptible to pesticide contamination through various means:
In her class action against Yogi Tea, Kaatz wants to represent tea drinkers from across the country. She is suing for violations of New York business law, as well a breach of warranty.
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