UNITED STATES
Three Hawaiian coffee farmers claim the market is flooded with fake Kona coffee and they are going to court to stop it.
The three farmers, all based on the big island of Hawaii, allege in a class-action lawsuit that some of the world’s largest retailers and their coffee suppliers are flooding the market with coffee falsely labeled as Kona coffee.
The lawsuit, filed in late February, is intended to benefit 600 to 1,000 Kona coffee growers on the island, according to a West Hawaii Today report.
Named as defendants are Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Safeway, Kroger, ABC Stores, Cost Plus/World Market, Bed Bath & Beyond, Albertsons and others. Also named were three Hawaii-based coffee producers – Hawaiian Isles Kona Coffee, Mulvadi Corp. and Maui Coffee Co. Mainland coffee producers named include Boyer’s Coffee Co. (Colorado), Magnum Coffee Roastery (Michigan), Copper Moon Coffee (Indiana), Gold Coffee Roasters (Florida) and Cameron’s Coffee and Distribution Co. (Minnesota).
The farmers have long believed the Kona market was saturated with what they thought was wrongly labeled coffee. Kona farmers produce 2.7 million pounds of green beans a year, the lawsuit alleges, but more than 20 million pounds of coffee labeled as Kona are sold at retail.
To prove their case, the farmers turned to scientific testing.
“The problem has always been determining what was actually in a particular bag as that information has been concealed from Kona farmers,” the complaint alleges. “Modern chemistry can now provide answers to that question.”
Chemical testing of beans packaged as Kona coffee should contain concentrations of zinc, barium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and strontium, the complaint alleges. Results showed, however, that 19 blended or 100% Kona coffee brands lacked the required concentrations and therefore are not real Kona coffee, it claims.