If you’ve heard talk about mold or mycotoxins in coffee lately, you’re not alone. It’s a hot topic, and as committed coffee lovers ourselves, we understand why you’re curious. Your health and your confidence in what you drink every day are what matter most.
As a specialty coffee company, we’ve always been confident in the quality of our beans. Why? Because there are many quality checkpoints along the specialty coffee value chain that maintain the high standards that specialty is known for. But relying on our own confidence isn't enough.
At Equator Coffees, we believe in transparency backed by action. We want you to feel as good about our coffee as we do. That’s why we took our confidence to the lab: we decided to work with a third-party partner to test our coffees, and lay any mycotoxin concerns to rest.
Why Specialty Coffee Stands Apart
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by online chatter, but here’s the key takeaway from the scientific community: drinking high-quality, specialty coffee is overwhelmingly safe.
Here's why the specialty coffee world is naturally insulated from these risks:
Quality Control is Everything
Mycotoxins (like Ochratoxin A, or OTA) are a byproduct of mold, which happens when coffee is poorly dried or stored. Specialty coffee, by definition, requires obsessive attention to detail from the farm to your cup.
- No Corners Cut: Our sourcing is meticulous. Producers we work with prioritize the careful processing, evaluation, and storage of their green coffee to protect its quality and flavor. Our exporting and importing partners evaluate and safely store the coffees on their journey to us - providing even more safeguards to coffee quality.
- Our Team of Coffee Detectives: Moldy coffee has a distinct and pretty bad taste. Our coffee team is highly trained to spot and reject any coffee with any off flavors including defects like contamination. Before any coffee arrives at our roastery, we receive pre-shipment and arrival samples, sent before the coffee leaves its country of origin and after it arrives in the US. Both sets of samples are tasted by our coffee team, and tested for their moisture content to confirm that it falls within a range that reduces the risk ofmold. When you buy specialty coffee, you're investing in an obsessive commitment to quality that works as a powerful safeguard.
The Roasting Process
Even if a small trace of mycotoxin were present in a green bean, the roasting process acts like a giant, cleansing oven. Studies have demonstrated that the intense heat of roasting substantially reduces mycotoxin concentration, bringing levels in your final brewed cup well within international safety guidelines.
Our Proof: Third-Party Testing with Eurofins
We can talk about quality control all day, but we know proof is better. So, we partnered with Eurofins, a globally trusted leader in food and product testing, to get an objective analysis of our roasted coffee.
- What We Tested: We submitted five popular coffees (Mocha Java, French Roast, Decaf Shakeout, Jaguar Espresso, Peru Chirinos Regenerative Organic Certified®) to be tested for key mycotoxins such as Aflatoxin and Ochratoxin A, mold, pesticides, and heavy metals.
- The Results: We’re happy to confirm that each of our coffees show nearly non-detectable levels of mycotoxins, mold, pesticides, and heavy metals.
This testing simply confirms the effectiveness of the high standards our sourcing partners and our team uphold every day.
Want to See the Data? You can view the comprehensive, third-party laboratory results from our testing here. If you’re new to reading reports like this, they can be a little bit complicated to interpret. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- All measures are reported in ppm (parts per million)
- All measures noted with "<" (less than) indicate a result below the limit of test sensitivity, and are therefore “non-detectable”
Transparency is in Our DNA
For Equator Coffees, voluntary third-party verification isn't a new trend—it's how we've always operated. Submitting our coffee for testing is a natural extension of our leadership legacy:
- 1999: Fair Trade Certified: We were one of the earliest coffee companies to seek Fair Trade Certification. That was about bringing objective proof to ethical sourcing and fair wages.
- 2005: Organic Certified: Although we’ve been purchasing organic coffees since Equator was founded, we took the next step to become a certified organic facility through CCOF, which requires annual inspections to confirm proper handling of coffee throughout our roastery.
- 2011: B Corp Certified: We became a Certified B Corporation, which requires us to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
- 8 Years of Annual cGMP Food Safety Audit: Our roastery is audited voluntarily each year by ASI - a leading product safety auditing and training company - to ensure that our processes, handling and storage, and quality standards are compliant with regulations and constantly improving where possible. This demonstrates our commitment to high-quality and minimizing any cross-product contamination, errors, or defects.
- 2022: Regenerative Organic Certified: We were proud to bring to market the first annual harvest of Regenerative Organic Certified™ (ROC™) coffee ever commercially available. ROC™ champions soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness - expanding on existing food certifications.
From our earliest days, Equator has been a demonstrative leader in practices that prioritize people and planet. We are proud to continue our legacy of transparency to earn and keep your trust.
Brew With Confidence
When you choose Equator Coffees, you’re supporting coffee where quality, ethics, and sustainability are non-negotiable. And now, you're choosing coffee backed by independent, third-party lab verification.
Got more questions about sourcing or our testing process? We’re happy to help! Please feel free to reach out to our team directly.
