One Hundred Years of Tea Tasting

The New York Times Tea, but No Sympathy, for the Tasters By KAREN DE WITT September 26, 1995

Slurp, swoosh, spit. Slurp, swoosh, spit.

For 48 years, Robert H. Dick, a Food and Drug Administration employee, has used this method to work his way through as many as 300 cups of tea a day in a small office near the Brooklyn waterfront. Mr. Dick is the Government's No. 1 tea taster, a connoisseur whose expertise is devoted to insuring adherence to an almost century-old standard that Americans drink only teas of "purity and wholesomeness."

But Washington deficit-busters have long wanted to ice Mr. Dick's job along with the seven- member United States Board of Tea, of which he is the chairman.

This year, they may succeed. On Friday, the Senate passed an amendment to a spending bill that repeals the Tea Importation Act of 1897 and all public funds that support the tea board. The House has its own version that also would end the tea program.

The wrangle over tea is not just a minor skirmish over an anachronistic service. It offers a snapshot of some of the problems ahead for a Republican Congress that has focused on far larger agencies for elimination, including the Departments of Commerce and Education.

As far back as the Nixon Administration, either the White House or the Congress has been trying to eliminate the nation's official tea tasters. By most measures -- in manpower and in dollars -- the tea import office is minuscule. Mr. Dick, an 81-year-old chemist, is the veteran tea examiner of what the F.D.A. describes as "a field force of 3.9 full-time employees" who work in the tea import program, which receives $200,000 each year in Federal funds.

In the Brooklyn office, an assistant tea taster, Faith Lim, helps Mr. Dick in this rarefied profession, weighing tea, boiling water, pouring tea into cups and finally tasting the brew. In Boston and San Francisco, two other testers examine the teas that enter the country at those ports.

All but a tiny portion of the tea drunk in the United States is imported. Most of it is black and destined for ice-tea consumption. Mr. Dick and his cohorts reject less than 1 percent of the 209 million tons of tea imported each year, usually because it is moldy or tainted. The total annual cost of the program comes to $253,500.

Despite its small size, tea importers say the tea program looms large in their industry, providing an inspection service that protects American consumers from inferior and adulterated teas. "It's difficult for industry to do this alone, to set and enforce standards," said Joseph P. Simrany, president of the Tea Association of the United States, which represents the major tea importers and packers.

It would seem a tempest in a tea pot if it were not for the numerous failed attempts over the last 20 years to eliminate tea tasting as a Government responsibility.

"It's a sign of how difficult it is in Washington," said Senator Hank Brown, Republican of Colorado, who sponsored an amendment to the 1996 Senate agriculture spending bill that would repeal the Tea Importation Act of 1897. "Defeating some of this nonsense is going to be a long tough job. The tea board is quite resilient."

But members of the tea industry say that cutting the program will only complicate their business and fail to save money because responsibility for the tea import program would probably be spread among several Government agencies instead of just one.

"A tea taster can pick up a moldy taste before a machine can pick it up," said Peter Goggi, director of tea buying and president of Royal Estates Tea Company, a division of Thomas J. Lipton Company. "It takes us 30 seconds to do an analysis, it takes a machine 24 hours."

So tempestuous has the fight over tea board become that the F.D.A. refuses to let Mr. Dick talk about the end of the tea board itself.

A typical day finds Mr. Dick in front of a rotating table sampling Formosa oolong, Darjeeling or hundreds of other black, green or Canton type teas in the Tea Examining Room in Brooklyn. Only once a year does he assemble the tea board for one or two days to set the minimum standard for determining the quality of tea imports for that year.

"I was stunned when I heard they were still doing it," said Senator Harry M. Reid, Democrat of Nevada, who called for "a congressional tea party" to 'dump tea experts overboard" in a speech on the floor in 1993. That year, Mr. Reid helped kill the $8,000 appropriated for use of the tea room, thinking that would end the program.

Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Jimmy Carter tried to get rid of the tea board and the tea taster. The Clinton Administration took a jab at it last year, including it in the Advisory Committee Termination Act, which would have wiped out the board and 31 statutory committees. Only one of those committees died; the tea board and the tea taster survived.

1. What is your opinion of the Tea Tasters? Do they seem to be fulfilling a necessary service or are they just an example of outdated waste? :: One Hundred Years of Tea Tasting :: Congressman J. Randy Forbes, Fourth District of Virginia June 21, 2007

American cultural history has seen many different eras, each with their own trends—some short-lived and others lasting decades. In the 1980s there was rock music and the Rubik’s cube. In the 1920s there was jazz music and “talkies”, or movies with sound. And in 19th century America, the trend was tea. Society was fixated with tea much like our 21st century American society is fixated with Starbucks coffee. In fact, tea was the beverage of choice for most 19th century Americans.

The vast majority of the tea consumed in America during the 19th century was imported, and in turn Congress enacted the Imported Tea Act of 1897 to prevent the importation of impure and unwholesome tea. The provision stated that tea would be examined for “quality,” as well as for “purity” and “fitness for consumption.” Those examining the tea were named the Board of Tea Experts, which was headed by a “Federal Tea-Taster.” The Board of Tea Experts and the Federal Tea Taster were supported through government funding to examine every lot of imported tea, using standard teas selected by the Board for comparison.

Nearly one hundred years later, the Federal Tea Taster remained, actively sipping tea on the federal government’s tab despite the fact that only 1% of tea coming in front of the federal tea taster was actually denied entry into the United States. In fact, for nearly one hundred years, the federal government was spending $120,000 a year in salary and operating expenses just to taste tea. In 1996, just one year short of the Imported Tea Act’s 100th anniversary, the Board of Tea Experts was finally eliminated by the Federal Tea Tasters Repeal Act of 1996.

This example is a small but eye-opening representation of just one of the ways the federal government is overspending. Duplicative and outdated government programs are eating away at hard-earned taxpayer dollars and digging us deeper into national debt. As it is right now, often times once a government program is created, it is considered “here to stay” whether or not the program is successful or necessary.

In 2001, the Senate Committee on Government Affairs found that there were 27 overlapping teen pregnancy programs, 40 separate employment and training programs, 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities, and 130 programs serving at-risk youth, and those examples just scratch the surface of duplicative programs. While issues like preventing teen pregnancy and encouraging intercultural education are important to our society and we benefit from having programs dedicated to those causes, many of the programs have so much overlap that we essentially end up funding identical programs multiple times over. There is plenty of room to consolidate these duplicative programs so that we are saving money and improving the quality of service under each program. Our domestic spending must be reviewed for cuts to those programs that were, like the Imported Tea Act, created to manage a temporary “trend” or need and are no longer necessary, and combine those programs that are nearly identical.

That is why I have cosponsored an important piece of legislation that, through a review system, eliminates unneeded and wasteful programs so that we can help ensure that our taxpayer dollars are going to those programs deemed necessary. The Commission on the Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies Act (CARFA) would provide for a closely controlled spending review process for non-defense, non- entitlement programs and would recommend the elimination or realignment of any program that is duplicative, wasteful, inefficient, outdated, or failing. This is a necessary step towards making our government spending more efficient and protecting taxpayer dollars from going towards programs that are failing or are wasteful. If enacted, CARFA would consist of 12 members who would be required to conduct a two-year, top-to- bottom review of all federal programs, except programs in the Department of Defense or programs such as Social Security. After reviewing each federal program, CARFA would identify those programs that are wasteful or inefficient, duplicative, outdated, or that have failed. CARFA’s system for assessment would be based on financial management of the program and the achievement of established performance measures, among other benchmarks. If this legislation is passed, the Commission, upon completion of its two-year review, would submit to Congress its recommendations for both the consolidation and elimination of domestic agencies and programs that have fallen into one or more of the areas of review. It would also submit proposed legislation to implement these recommendations.

This mass reorganization of our governmental programs would allow our government to run more efficiently, save billions of dollars in federal spending and improve the quality of service under each program. American citizens deserve a confidence in knowing that their tax payer dollars are not going to outdated or overlapping programs, that they are going to receive first rate service from governmental programs, and that their government is doing everything they can to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their taxpayer dollars.

1. Respond to the following prompt, using the example of the Tea Tasters to support your response: Some would argue that CARFA is a necessary remedy for the waste inherent in the federal bureaucracy, while others think that it will turn into yet another government agency intended to do good but that will just cause more bureaucratic waste. What do you think? Is there some sort of remedy that would work better to reduce waste? Be explicit in your response.