Protecting Origins

If you are a fermentation consultant who introduces microbes into countries without first consulting the national authorities and receiving clearance to import the organisms, this article is for you. If you are communicating with national authorities and obtaining clearance to import foreign microbes for an agreed-upon purpose, this article is not for you. For instance, if you have sought and received permission to use the microbial culture in a factory setting, you are aware that this permission does not extend to use in open-air conditions within a washing station. By following the regulations, you demonstrate that you understand the risks involved, that you take appropriate actions to mitigate them, and that you respect the coffee-producing country and its environment.?

If you are a producer who purchases microbes from a supplier within the producing country, I hope this article motivates you to ask the supplier about their compliance with the country’s regulations. Generally, large companies comply with the regulations because they do not want to be legally liable for the consequences of not doing so. If you hire a consultant to purchase microbes for you, have a frank discussion with them about the subject and include a clause in your work agreement that holds them financially responsible for any detrimental consequences of introducing a microbe to an environment.

If you are a coffee roaster who purchases fermented coffee for your product portfolio and you pride yourself on sustainable ethical sourcing, I hope this information provokes you to have some important conversations with your suppliers and customers.

Foreign microbes are alien species

According to Magliozzi et al. (2022), alien species meet these three criteria:?

1. The organism has been introduced into an environment outside its biogeographic barriers, and thus the natural conditions that confine the organism to a given ecosystem are no longer present. The most obvious example of this would be an island or continent that presents a physical barrier, which is why international travel and trade is inclined to introduce alien species. Altitude can also be a biogeographical boundary. Coffee cultivars have shown natural growing regions, with Coffea eugenioides naturally growing at high altitudes and C. canephora being native to lowlands. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that when these species created C. arabica, approximately 400,000 years ago, there was a compromise in biogeographical barriers, allowing them to mate.?
2. The organism has been either intentionally or unintentionally introduced by humans. For example, if someone takes Koji from Japan and introduces it into Colombia or Ethiopia to improve coffee quality during fermentation, this would be an example of intentional introduction. If, on the other hand, someone unknowingly transports a plant infected with coffee leaf rust and plants it in a field in Hawaii, this would be an example of unintentional introduction of a microbe (Ramírez-Camejo et al., 2022).
3. The organism introduced into the environment survives there. For instance, coffee plants could never be an invasive species in Canada because the extremely cold winter temperatures would not allow them to survive. (In this way, seasonable weather can act as a mode of protection for certain regions of the world. Unfortunately, almost everything grows in a tropical climate, so in the absence of a natural predator, one can expect an organism to survive and potentially thrive there.)

What costs are associated with alien species?

The United Nations Environment Programme has estimated that invasive alien species (IAS) cost the world over USD 423 billion annually (UNEP, 2024). These species are extremely difficult to control; their impacts increase and the financial costs multiply. Additionally, as the world warms, regions that were previously protected by their seasonal climate will become hospitable to these organisms, further exacerbating the problem.

In addition to their financial costs, IAS pose a significant threat to regional biodiversity. According to a website from the European Commission, ‘IAS play a key role in 60% of the global and animal extinctions’ (EC, 2024). Food crops are particularly vulnerable to IAS, putting global food security at risk.

This threat is the reason why customs and immigration forms ask about visits to farms and request visitors not to bring fruits, vegetables, and non-processed food items into a country. It's not about restricting what a person can have; it is an attempt to prevent the enormous costs of an IAS outbreak. Foreign microbes are considered to be biosecurity threats to countries.

If you think I am exaggerating the risk, let me assure you that this is a conservative estimate. Scientists are just beginning to understand the impact of IAS in the microbial world, and research suggests that we may be facing greater challenges than we have realised. For example, in Ethiopia's Convention on Biological Diversity, it is noted that a lack of monitoring and resources to control IAS are significant barriers to addressing this issue. Simply put, just because we don't have concrete data on the subject doesn't mean these practices are environmentally friendly or legal. Regulatory mechanisms and broader systemic challenges need to be addressed alongside the issue of IAS.?

It's crucial that people involved in the coffee industry do not exploit this lack of monitoring and enforcement as an opportunity. Introducing new challenges and costs to already-struggling geographical regions will only make things worse. Ultimately, the loss of biodiversity in coffee-growing regions affects us all. In order to preserve these valuable resources for future generations, it's important to abide by countries' import requirements.?

Mutation and multiplication

All organisms evolve over time. While humans can create a new generation every 20–25 years, microbes can multiply in as little as 20 minutes. Even though bread yeast multiply slightly more slowly, with a new generation every 80–90 minutes, it's still impressive how quickly they can reproduce when used to make dough rise. If yeast were allowed to multiply continuously for a week, they would produce over a hundred new generations; humans would require over 2,000 years to reach the same number of generations.?

Yeast strains can mutate within a week, forcing commercial yeast producers to begin the cultivation process anew, with a pure starter culture, in order to guarantee consistency. These pure strains of starter culture are carefully monitored and controlled in microbial libraries. Once microbes or their spores are released into the environment, it becomes difficult or impossible to predict how they will evolve.?

What could happen if an invasive alien microbial species got loose on a coffee farm?

The impact of introducing new microbes into an environment depends on the specific microbe. One potential consequence is disruption of the natural balance of the environment's microbiome, causing a ripple effect throughout the ecosystem. For example, a disruption to the soil's ecosystem could affect a plant's nutrient supply. This may result in poor plant health and render the soil unsuitable for future crop growth. The main concern is that we cannot predict the full extent of the consequences of introducing new species, and nor do we have effective methods to control or restore an ecosystem once it has been contaminated.

Humans working with spore-forming fungi should be cautious. Fungal tissue and mammalian tissue are so similar that if a fungus begins to grow in a person, it is very difficult to eradicate, as most medications will not be able to differentiate between fungal and mammalian tissue. In other words, the treatment might kill the person along with the fungus. This puts the health of all animals living in an environment of an invasive fungal species at risk. If this scares you, it should, and this is one reason why it’s so important that we use microbes responsibly.?

Bacteria can create biofilms (a sort of bacterial “nest”) that go on to chronically contaminate a water source. Even in developed countries and in hi-tech environments, these films can be difficult to get rid of, costing thousands of dollars to eradicate. Imagine the havoc a film could cause if it forms in fermentation equipment in a rural area or in a stream into which coffee production wastewater is emptied.

Invasive microbial species have harmed agriculture

Coffee leaf rust, the fungus Hemileia vastatrix, has always lived on coffee plants but only began to devastate them after the plants and the fungal spores were transported outside the biogeographical barriers of central eastern Africa. ‘The intensity of coffee rust infections in the wild was kept in check by a combination of factors, including the biological diversity of the forest, the genetic resistance of the coffee plant, the climate, and parasites that attack the rust fungus’ (McCook, 2006). Coffee leaf rust didn’t thrive when coffee was brought to Yemen because the water deficit there made it impossible for the fungus to thrive, presenting a natural barrier. This water deficit was fortuitous, as most of the coffee genetics originated from Yemen, and therefore the coffee plants that were originally dispersed throughout the world were rust free.?

According to McCook (2006) the spread of coffee leaf rust is likely linked to British imperialism and expeditions that led troops both into the depths of Ethiopian coffee regions as well as across the Arabian Sea to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The ecological conditions in Sri Lanka allowed this coffee disease to spread during the mid-nineteenth century. It is estimated that Sri Lanka’s coffee industry lost ￡2 million per year after the disease was introduced (McCook, 2006). Because every successful Hemileia vastatrix spore produces 100,000 additional spores during its reproductive cycle, it is unsurprising that shortly after the outbreak in Sri Lanka, trade routes and the winds swept the disease onto the mainland of India and to British colonies throughout the world. (To learn more about this, please read McCook’s article on coffee leaf rust’s global integration.) Losses associated with coffee leaf rust today are estimated at USD 1–2 billion annually (Demissie et al., 2021). Hawaii was free of this invasive species until 2020. As far as I know, coffee leaf rust has yet to mutate to affect other crops, and in that way we are incredibly lucky.?

The coffee berry borer is another example of an organism that became invasive when it was exported out of its natural habitat, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The resulting crop damage has since cost the coffee industry billions in US dollars. Outside the coffee industry, we can see evidence of an invasive organism in the Irish potato famine; the causative agent, the Phytophthora infestans fungus, originated in Mexico. Similarly, Phylloxera, an aphid-like insect from North America, severely damaged European vineyards beginning in the 1800s. The economic damage could not be curbed until horticulturists grafted European vines onto North American rootstocks.

I hope that by sharing this information with you, you will realise that national regulations on importing alien species are a response to numerous environmental tragedies. Yes, abiding by regulations can be expensive and can even block potential business opportunities, but are small finite gains worth the potential risk and harm? A farmer may benefit for a few years, but if the wrong microbe is introduced into an environment, the consequences could devastate an entire region for decades or longer. This doesn’t just mean harming the coffee industry and losing biodiversity. It also threatens to plunge some coffee farmers into deeper poverty. In other words, the costs greatly outweigh any benefits. It is in everyone’s best interest to encourage responsible fermentation within the coffee industry.