Tropical Traditions Increases Healthy Traditions Product Line: Emphasizing GMO and Glyphosate-tested Products
2016 looks to be a very promising year for our new Healthy Traditions product line. In late 2015, Tropical Traditions stopped carrying the USDA certified organic seal on all of their own products. Replacing the USDA organic standards is a new, more rigorous standard of classifying the types of products Tropical Traditions sells to the public. It is not a new standard for Tropical Traditions, as the new logos and product standards implemented reflect our values and quality of food that we have offered to the public since we started selling products in the United States in 2002. We made the decision to not continue certifying our products as USDA Organic late in 2014, when we discovered that most of the USDA Organic grains we were selling to our customers had residue amounts of glyphosate, the active ingredient in popular herbicides, the most well-known being Round-up, the #1 herbicide in the world. Tropical Traditions has a ZERO tolerance level for GMOs, herbicides, and pesticides, and since the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) allows small residue amounts of pesticides and herbicides approved by the EPA for conventional crops to be present in USDA Organic certified products, we knew that we had to develop our own standards to both use in purchasing products directly from producers, as well as to educate our consumers on our own values and standards.