Scientists’ new approach in fight against counterfeit alcohol spirits

HERIOT-WATT UNIVERSITY

In the shadowy world of counterfeit alcoholic spirit production, where profits soar and brands are exploited, the true extent of this illegal market remains shrouded.

Now scientists from the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling (ICBD) at Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh, Scotland, working alongside Dr John Edwards of Process NMR Associates, based in New York, are compiling a database to test, compare and log counterfeit spirits.

The research has featured in a paper, titled, Worldwide Illicit and Counterfeit Alcoholic Spirits: Problem, Detection, and Prevention, published in the Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists.

The team have spent the last six months using lab-based analytical techniques to detect the chemical fingerprint of hundreds of international spirits, including whisky, tequila, mezcal, and bourbon.

Michael Bryan of the ICBD at Heriot-Watt, is leading the research as part of his PhD project. He said: “Once complete, this database will provide in-depth analysis of hundreds of legitimate spirits, becoming an information source to determine the authenticity of a product.

“At present, testing apparatus, methodology and human resource is ridiculously expensive, costing up to half a million or more pounds. And the analysis machinery is huge, they can be size of a car or bigger. So, it’s a very difficult process and what I want to do is to take a different approach. 

“Let’s transfer the heavy lifting from analytical services to comparative mathematics.”

While counterfeit spirit production is sizeable, the paper acknowledges there is no single solution with tougher legislation and increased fines not proven to be significant deterrents. It highlights the need for the development of low-cost methods to determine the authenticity of a product without the need to physically open a bottle.

Working with Process NMR Associates, the scientists are using a variety of analytical tools including near infrared spectroscopy (NIR), ultra-violet visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, liquid chromatography (HPLC-DAD), and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to determine the chemistry of sample spirits.

Michael continues: “By having a database of hundreds of spirits, outlining the legitimacy of a product, we can use less expensive techniques to sample a product. If it doesn’t meet those benchmarks, then we can quickly determine that it requires further analysis.

“This will ultimately save time and resources and ensure that we focus efforts on products that we suspect of being counterfeit.”

The true scale of counterfeit spirit production is unknown however the World Health Organisation estimates that at least 25% of all spirits consumed are illicit. Many other authorities including the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development place this figure at over 40% in some areas.

Counterfeit spirits are commonly sold through online marketplaces, social media, and black-market websites, making them difficult to regulate and allowing sellers to hide their identity. In many cases the buyer of counterfeit spirits does so willingly, often due to affordability.

A major impact of illicit spirit production relates to public health. Some counterfeit spirits can contain harmful ingredients including, in extreme cases, aviation fuel or embalming fluid to increase the alcoholic concentration. Consequently, cases of liver damage, blindness, and death result.

Only last year, Iran saw a rise in fatalities linked to counterfeit alcohol and poisoning in the Alborz region in the north of the country with 14 deaths and at least 120 additional poisonings.

The economic impact of this illegal trade is significant, with up to 23,400 jobs said to be lost and eroding the trust of reputable manufacturers. It costs the EU, each year, around €3B in lost revenue.

As much as 33% of tested old and collected Scotch whisky is said to be counterfeit. A figure underlined in 2018 when the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre tested 55 bottles of Scotch Whisky that were old and considered rare. These were obtained from private collectors, auctions, and retail. The test concluded 21 bottles (38%) were faked, and every bottle from before 1900 found to be counterfeit.

Professor Annie Hill from Heriot-Watt University is the academic supervisor for the project. She said: “The Scotch Whisky Association drives the fight against counterfeit Scotch, and The Scotch Whisky Research Institute is a world leader in the detection of counterfeit spirits.

“This paper defines the problems and highlights potential solutions and our continuing research aims to further increase awareness, and to develop accessible and affordable methods to enable wider detection and identification of illicit distilled spirit products.”

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DOI

10.1080/03610470.2024.2319934 

ARTICLE TITLE

Worldwide Illicit and Counterfeit Alcoholic Spirits: Problem, Detection, and Prevention

 

Two Nights in Santiago With Roger Waters

Vijay Prashad | 29 Nov 2023

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“Stop the Genocide” in white letters against a red background appears on the screens above the band’s head, as the guitars tear through the night.

Roger Waters performing.

No one does a stadium show like Roger Waters. The music, of course, is resplendent, but so too are the soundscape, the images, the giant sheep and pig, the lasers, the films, the energy of the fans who—despite the language differences—sing along… “Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?” It is a riot of emotions. The quiet calm of Santiago is broken by familiar sounds and necessary feelings: yes, we are here; yes, we exist; yes, we must resist. Santiago is a city blistered by social inequality. For two nights, Roger Waters played at the Estadio Monumental in Macul, a commune of Santiago that is more middle-class than the rest of the city although still not immune from the sharp divides that produced the massive social unrest of 2019. Then Roger sang a version of Víctor Jara’s El derecho de vivir en paz, with new lyrics for the new moment:

I can hear the Cacerolazo I can smell you, Piñera All fucking rats smell the same.

The Cacerolazo is the banging of pots, a social protest that resounded from Buenos Aires (2001) to Santiago (2011 and then again from 2019 to 2022). There is a good reason to walk on the streets and bang pots every day given the permanent condition of austerity reproduced by people like Chile’s former president Sebastían Piñera, one more of the “fucking rats” that make life hell. There is the austerity, the demise of social welfare and decent work, and the rise of poverty and social despair. Then there are the sharpened contradictions, the anger that sometimes gives rise to hope in madmen (Argentina’s incoming president Javier Milei is one of them) and at other moments, it gives rise to disorganized and organized forms of dissent. A sheep flies over the tens of thousands of people in the stadium. It is the physical cognate of the song that flies off the stage, a paean to the atomisation of people in society by this State of Permanent Austerity and of the necessity of resistance.

Through quiet reflection, and great dedication Master the art of karate Lo, we shall rise up, And then we’ll make the bugger’s eyes water

Why not? Why not rise up? Sure, run like hell, run as fast as you can from the forces of repression that want to manage the contradictions of austerity. But then—as Roger does, as that sound of the hammer battering down your door quietens—take off the shirt that says, “run like hell” and put on one that says, “Resist.” The guitars tear through the night, the lasers flash to infinity, and the desire increases to rip off one’s fear of the State of Permanent Austerity and to rush into protest. But the images are chosen carefully. This is not a call for action without strategy. “Master the art of karate,” sings Roger. Like the karateka, dedicated study is needed, and the battlefield must certainly be approached with care to “make the bugger’s eyes water” and to do that with careful strategy. The hammer’s sound is both that of the march of the police—in Chile the hated Carabineros—and the banging of the tools of the people, including the pots and pans. The stadium is engulfed by the madness of the electric guitar (particularly when Dave Kilminster has his eyes closed and his fingers aflame), heartbeats symphonised drawing people into Roger’s bar, a bottle of mezcal on the piano, Roger with his arms in the air, the night sky clear and hopeful because not far away is the dawn. Universal Human Rights About 5 kilometers from the Estadio Monumental is the Estadio Nacional, where Víctor Jara was assassinated by the coup regime of Augusto Pinochet 50 years ago. A few days before Roger’s show in Santiago, Victor’s wife, Joan Jara died, but their daughter Amanda was there to listen to Roger recognise the assassination of Víctor Jara and to Inti-Illimani open the show with a tribute to Víctor, including singing a full-throated version of El derecho, itself a tribute to Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese fighters.

Donde revientan la flor Con genocidio y napalm (Where they burst the flower With genocide and napalm)

Jorge Coulón from Inti-Illimani belted out those lines with a kufiyah around his neck. Roger, with his acoustic guitar and kufiyah and with the haunting voice of Shanay Johnson alongside him, sings, lay down Jerusalem, lay your burden down.

If I had been god I would not have chosen anyone I would have laid an even hand On all my children everyone Would have been content To forgo Ramadan and Lent Time better spent In the company of friends Breaking bread and mending nets.

“Stop the Genocide” in white letters against a red background appears on the screens above the band’s head. Roger was born in England in 1943 to a communist mother, Mary Duncan Whyte (1913-2009). His father—Second Lieutenant Eric Fletcher Waters, also a communist—was killed in Italy in 1944 (immortalized in my favorite song, The Gunner’s Dream from Final Cut, 1983). Five years later, the United Nations crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That text is the foundation of Roger’s beliefs (“I don’t know when I first read it,” Roger tells me after the show, but he refers to it often, including in his shows). The fierce defense of human rights governs Roger, his anti-war sentiment shaped by the loss of his father. It is this universal faith that drives Roger’s politics. “Are there paranoids in the stadium?” Roger asks. We are paranoid not because we are clinically ill, but because there is an enormous gulf between what we know to be true and what the powers that be tell us are supposed to be true. Roger Waters stands for human rights, including the rights of the Palestinians. We know that to be true because that is what he says, and he acts according to that belief. But the powers that be say that what Roger says is not true and that in fact, he is antisemitic. A consequence of the powers that be is that they tried to cancel his show in Frankfurt and—weirdly—all the hotel owners in Argentina refused to allow him—but not his band—a room in their establishments (he had to stay at a friend’s house in Uruguay). When Katie Halper and I asked him about this attack on him, Roger responded:

My platform is simple: it is [the] implementation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights for all our brothers and sisters in the world including those between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. My support of universal human rights is universal. It is not antisemitism, which is odious and racist and which, like all forms of racism, I condemn unreservedly.

Roger says this over and over again, and yet, over and over again the powers that be malign Roger. “I will not be cancelled,” Roger said in Birmingham at a concert. And why should he be? The attempt to cancel critics of Israel had some impact in recent years, but no longer carries weight: the atrocities of Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza have produced new generations of people who see the hideousness of the Occupation and refuse to bow down before the powers that be. “We need more than a pause” in the bombing of Gaza, Roger said from the stage in Santiago, “but a ceasefire that lasts forever,” the soundtrack to that sentiment produced by the saxophone of Seamus Blake and the lap steel of Jon Carin. The show opens with Pink—the lead figure from The Wall (1982)—in a wheelchair, comfortably numb. In the second half, Roger is in the wheelchair in a straitjacket, thrown in there by orderlies of the powers that be. Is this the life we really want? It better not be. I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon. Roger Waters’s This is Not a Drill tour moves on to Lima, Peru (November 29), San José, Costa Rica (December 2), Bogotá, Colombia (December 5), and ends in Quito, Ecuador (December 9).

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The views are personal.

Source: This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Californians bet farming agave for spirits holds key to weathering drought and groundwater limits

AMY TAXIN
Sat, 4 November 2023 

APTOPIX California Agave Farming
Leo Ortega tours agave plants at his home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Agave thrives on almost no water. The plant isn't grown on a large scale in California, and it would take years for that to happen, but local distillers say the spirits they've made from agave so far are selling out. 

(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

MURRIETA, Calif. (AP) — Leo Ortega started growing spiky blue agave plants on the arid hillsides around his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked.

A decade later, his property is now dotted with thousands of what he and others hope is a promising new crop for the state following years of punishing drought and a push to scale back on groundwater pumping.

The 49-year-old mechanical engineer is one of a growing number of Californians planting agave to be harvested and used to make spirits, much like the way tequila and mezcal are made in Mexico. The trend is fueled by the need to find hardy crops that don’t need much water and a booming appetite for premium alcoholic beverages since the COVID-19 pandemic.

It's attracted entrepreneurs such as Ortega, as well as some California farmers. They're seeking to shift to more water-efficient crops and irrigation methods to avoid fallowing their fields with looming limits on how much groundwater they can pump, as well as more extreme weather patterns anticipated with climate change. Agave, unlike most other crops, thrives on almost no water.

“When we were watering them, they didn’t really grow much, and the ones that weren’t watered were actually growing better,” Ortega said, walking past rows of the succulents.

He is now investing in a distillery after his initial batches of spirits, made from Agave americana, sold for $160 a bottle.

Consumers started spending more on high-quality spirits during the pandemic shutdowns, which spurred a rise in premium beverage products, said Erlinda A. Doherty, an agave spirits expert and consultant.

Tequila and mezcal were the second-fastest growing spirit category in the country in 2022, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

Both are proprietary spirits under Mexican laws, which are recognized in U.S. trade agreements. Much like how champagne hails from a region of France, anything called tequila must contain at least 51% blue Weber agave and be distilled in Jalisco or a handful of other Mexican states. Mezcal can be made from a variety of agave types but must be produced in certain Mexican states.

Agave growers and distillers in California — as well as some in Texas and Arizona — are betting there is an appetite for more agave-based spirits even if they are produced outside of Mexico and not called tequila or mezcal.

“We seem to have this insatiable thirst for agave, so why not have a domestically grown supply?” Doherty said. “I am kind of bullish on it.”

Alfonso Mojica Navarro, director of the Mexican Chamber of the Tequila Industry, said tequila has a lengthy history, global reputation for excellence and close connection with Mexican culture. While he didn’t comment specifically on California’s foray into agave spirits, he said he believes Mexico can respond to the growing demand.

“The tequila industry is concerned that each time there are more players trying to take advantage of tequila’s success by producing agave spirits, liqueurs or other beverages that allude to the Mexican drink, its origins and characteristics despite not being the same,” he said in a statement.

Agave isn't grown on a large scale in California yet, and it would take years for that to happen. But spirits, made by cooking the plant's core to produce sugars that are fermented, are proving popular, said Ventura Spirits owner Henry Tarmy, who distilled his first batch five years ago.

“We’ve sold everything we’ve made,” he said.

Much like Mexico has, California is taking steps to protect its nascent industry. The state legislature enacted a law last year requiring “California agave spirits” be made solely with plants grown in the state and without additives.

A dozen growers and a handful of distillers also formed the California Agave Council last year, and the group has tripled in size since then, said Craig Reynolds, the founding director who planted agave in the Northern California community of Davis. He said those making agave spirits have a deep appreciation for Mexican tequila.

“We have about 45 member growers," he said. “All of them want more plants.”

Agave takes little water but presents other challenges. The plant typically takes at least seven years to grow and is tough to harvest, and a mature plant can weigh hundreds of pounds. Once cut, it has to be grown all over again.

Still, many see agave as a viable alternative as California — which supplies the bulk of the country’s produce — explores ways to cut back water use.

While record rain and snowfall over the winter mostly ended a three-year drought in California, more dry periods are likely in store. The state enacted a law nearly a decade ago to regulate the pumping of groundwater after excessive pumping led some residents' wells to run dry and the land to sink. Scientists expect extreme weather patterns will become even more common as the planet warms, causing more drought.

Stuart Woolf, who grows tomatoes and almonds in the state's crop-rich Central Valley, said he started thinking about agave after estimating he’ll only be able to farm about 60% of his land in 20 years due to water limitations. And that's despite investing in solar energy and groundwater recharge projects to protect the farm that has been in his family for generations.

After trying out a test plot a few years ago, Woolf went on to plant some 200,000 agave on land he otherwise would have fallowed. Each acre of agave is taking only 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of water a year — a tenth of what row crops demand and even less than pistachio and almond trees, he said.

Woolf and his wife Lisa gave a $100,000 donation to the University of California, Davis, which formed a research fund to look at the succulent’s varieties and its potential as a low-water crop.

“I have been trying to figure out what is a crop that I can grow that is somewhat climate-resilient, drought-tolerant, so I can utilize our land,” Woolf said. “The amount of water I am giving them is so low, I don’t think I am ever going to have a problem.”

Leo Ortega and his wife walk around their property, surrounded by blue agave plants, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California.

Agave plants grow by the home of Leo Ortega and his wife, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California.

Agave plants are shown at the home of Leo Ortega, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Agave thrives on almost no water. The plant isn't grown on a large scale in California, and it would take years for that to happen, but local distillers say the spirits they've made from agave so far are selling out. 



Leo Ortega stands near young agave plants that are next to his greenhouse, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California. 

Agave plants are lined up at the home of Leo Ortega, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Agave thrives on almost no water. The plant isn't grown on a large scale in California, and it would take years for that to happen, but local distillers say the spirits they've made from agave so far are selling out. 

Leo Ortega and his wife pour Agave Murrieta, made from their agave plants, at their home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023.

A bottle of Agave Murrieta, far right, is shown by Leo Ortega, made from Agave Americana plants grown at Ortega's home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. There's been a burst of interest in growing agave, the plant used to make Tequila popular in Mexico, in California after years of punishing drought and a push by the state to regulate groundwater use to shore up waning supplies. It started with entrepreneurs like Ortega, who is now investing in a distillery to turn his plants into a California spirit. 

A bottle of Agave Murrieta, a spirt distilled from Agave Americana plants grown at the home of Leo Ortega, is shown in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. There's been a burst of interest in growing agave, the plant used to make Tequila popular in Mexico, in California after years of punishing drought and a push by the state to regulate groundwater use to shore up waning supplies. It started with entrepreneurs like Ortega, who is now investing in a distillery to turn his plants into a California spirit. 



Leo Ortega's home is surrounded by Agave Americana plants in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California. 

Leo Ortega carries a massive, flowering asparagus spear from an Agave Americana plant, at his home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. There's been a burst of interest in growing agave, the plant used to make Tequila popular in Mexico, in California after years of punishing drought and a push by the state to regulate groundwater use to shore up waning supplies. It started with entrepreneurs like Ortega, who is now investing in a distillery to turn his plants into a California spirit. 

Leo Ortega talks about the Agave Americana plants that surround his home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. 

Leo Ortega and his wife tour the Agave Americana plants around their home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California. 

(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

NOT CHINA NOR MEXICO
Afghanistan is the fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, UN drug agency says


Afghans gather under a bridge to consume drugs, mostly heroin and methamphetamines in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 30, 2021. Afghanistan is the world’s fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, a report from the United Nations drug agency said Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. The country is also a major opium producer and heroin source, even though the Taliban declared a war on narcotics after they returned to power in August 2021.

(AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File)

An Afghan drug addict sits alone in a dilapidated TV room at a drug treatment facility in the eastern Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad on Nov. 12, 2013. Afghanistan is the world’s fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, a report from the United Nations drug agency said Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. The country is also a major opium producer and heroin source, even though the Taliban declared a war on narcotics after they returned to power in August 2021.

(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File)

An armed Afghan policemen destroys an opium poppy field in Noorgal, Kunar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on April 13, 2013. Afghanistan is the world’s fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, a report from the United Nations drug agency said Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. The country is also a major opium producer and heroin source, even though the Taliban declared a war on narcotics after they returned to power in August 2021.

 (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)

BY RIAZAT BUTT
 September 9, 2023


ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan is the world’s fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, a report from the United Nations drug agency said Sunday. The country is also a major opium producer and heroin source, even though the Taliban declared a war on narcotics after they returned to power in August 2021.

The United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crimes, which published the report, said meth in Afghanistan is mostly made from legally available substances or extracted from the ephedra plant, which grows in the wild.

The report called Afghanistan’s meth manufacturing a growing threat to national and regional health and security because it could disrupt the synthetic drug market and fuel addiction. It said seizures of meth suspected to have come from Afghanistan have been reported from the European Union and east Africa.


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Annual meth seizure totals from inside the country rose from less than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) in 2019 to nearly 2,700 kilograms (6,000 pounds) in 2021, suggesting increased production, the report said. But it couldn’t give a value for the country’s meth supply, the quantities being produced, nor its domestic usage, because it doesn’t have the data.

OTHER NEWS

Mexican marines seize 7,200 bottles of liquid meth in mezcal bottles bound for Australia

Angela Me, the chief of the UNODC’s Research and Trend Analysis Branch, told The Associated Press that making meth, especially in Afghanistan, had several advantages over heroin or cocaine production.



“You don’t need to wait for something to grow,” said Me. “You don’t need land. You just need the cooks and the know-how. Meth labs are mobile, they’re hidden. Afghanistan also has the ephedra plant, which is not found in the biggest meth-producing countries: Myanmar and Mexico. It’s legal in Afghanistan and it grows everywhere. But you need a lot of it.”

Me said it was too early to assess what impact the Taliban’s drug crackdown has had on meth supplies.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, Abdul Mateen Qani, told the AP that the Taliban-run government has prohibited the cultivation, production, sale and use of all intoxicants and narcotics in Afghanistan.


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He said authorities have destroyed 644 factories and around 12,000 acres of land where prohibited narcotics were cultivated, processed or produced. There have been more than 5,000 raids in which 6,000 people have been arrested.

“We cannot claim 100% that it is finished because people can still do these activities in secret. It is not possible to bring it to zero in such a short time,” said Qani. “But we have a four-year strategic plan that narcotics in general and meth in particular will be finished.”

A U.N. report published in November said that opium cultivation since the Taliban takeover increased by 32% over the previous year, and that opium prices rose following authorities’ announcement of a cultivation ban in April 2022. Farmers’ income from opium sales tripled from $425 million in 2021 to $1.4 billion in 2022.

The 2022 report also said that the illicit drug market thrived as Afghanistan’s economy sharply contracted, making people open to illegal cultivation and trafficking for their survival.

Afghans are dealing with drought, severe economic hardship and the continued consequences of decades of war and natural disasters.

The downturn, along with the halt of international financing that propped up the economy of the former Western-backed government, is driving people into poverty, hunger, and addiction.

An Afghan health official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said around 20,000 people are in hospitals for drug addiction, mostly to crystal meth. Of these patients, 350 are women. He said children are also being treated, but did not give the number nor their ages.

UK

Endangered Komodo dragons hatch at Chester Zoo



BBC
Thu, June 22, 2023 

Two endangered Komodo dragons have been born at a zoo, joining a "vitally important" international conservation breeding programme.

The hatchlings are the world's largest lizard species and will grow to more than 3m (9.8ft) long.

It was the first time Chester Zoo successfully bred hatchlings from a pair of mating dragons.

The reptiles are found on a handful of small islands in Indonesia, where experts say just 3,000 remain.

The hatchlings arrived to mum Mezcal and dad Satali weighing about 74g and measuring 40cm.

Matt Cook, lead keeper of reptiles, said the "fascinating creatures" have survived for tens of thousands of years, but added "populations in the wild have been pushed to the edge of existence in the last 50 years" due to increased human activity, habitat loss and a rapidly changing climate.


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Rare tree kangaroo emerges from mum's pouch at zoo

He added: "We have been eagerly awaiting this moment after we successfully introduced female dragon Mezcal with male Satali and they seemed to hit it off straight away.

"A month later we found a clutch of eggs that had been laid and we carefully placed them in a special incubator where they have been monitored closely for several months."

He said the two youngsters were "thriving and will join a vitally important conservation breeding programme".

The Komodo dragon is the largest of the world's 7,555 lizard species, with ancestors that date back more than 100 million years, the zoo said.

Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk

Can Cooperatives Save Mezcal?

A booming mezcal market, driven by imports to the US, is fueling unsustainable farming and production practices in Mexico. Collective ownership is helping growers protect agave’s genetic diversity, local biodiversity, and mezcal’s ancestral roots.


BY ANNELISE JOLLEY
CIVIL EATS
APRIL 10, 2023

Erika Meneses, director of Aguerrido, stands by a wild agave plant with one of the cooperative’s mezcaleros. (Photo courtesy of Aguerrido)


Erika Meneses never set out to form her own mezcal cooperative. But a series of setbacks—the pandemic, a job loss, and, most devastating, the death of her husband in 2019—pushed her to innovate. Meneses’s husband was a mezcalero, a mezcal producer. Together they worked at the cooperatively owned brand Sanzekan in Guerrero, a state on Mexico’s Pacific coast. After losing her husband and then her source of income in 2020, Meneses decided to take what she had learned at Sanzekan and apply it to her own community of Chilapa in the mountains of Guerrero.

She asked local master mezcaleros, or maestros, if they were interested in producing and selling their mezcal collaboratively. Meneses believed that if they banded together, they could reach larger markets while remaining faithful to ancestral practices. Four maestros joined her.

They named the brand Aguerrido, meaning fierce or valiant. “The cooperative is a warrior that does not give up, that fights, that defends its culture, but above all, defends traditional mezcals,” Meneses says. By “traditional mezcals,” she means agave-distilled spirits that reflect local terroir and are made in small batches according to ancestral methods, rather than mass produced.

“The boom has done a lot of damage. Traditions are being lost in communities.”

The need to distinguish and defend traditional mezcal is a result of the spirit’s explosive global popularity. Over the last decade, Mexico’s mezcal production increased by approximately 700 percent, with the majority designated for international markets. In 2019, the United States surpassed Mexico to become the world’s largest mezcal market. And as with demand for other Mexican crops—such as avocados and corn—the American obsession with mezcal unleashed a host of downstream effects that impact small producers most acutely.

Many brands are no longer producer-owned, Meneses explains, but rather run by businesses with the capital to invest in flashy marketing. Some foreign-owned brands offer to buy mezcal in bulk from small mezcaleros being squeezed from the market, leading to industrialized production methods.

As a result, many mezcaleros turn to unsustainable practices to produce greater volumes in the short term at the expense of their futures. “The boom has done a lot of damage,” says Meneses. “Traditions are being lost in communities.”

Traditional mezcal production is synonymous with sustainability. Producers have historically practiced rotational agave growing, selective harvesting, and small-batch distillation. But when they try to keep up with unsustainable demand, ecological damage follows. As growers across Mexico and as far north as the Western U.S. are realizing, agave opens the door to a lucrative market.

In some cases, communities are deforesting hillsides to make room for monocultures of fast-growing agave. Meanwhile, rare agave species—which can take up to 35 years to mature—are disappearing from the wild. Overharvesting and monocropping both threaten the agave’s genetic diversity and local biodiversity.

Agave plant photo courtesy of Aguerrido.


In the face of these challenges, mezcal cooperatives are designed to protect small producers. At their best, collectively owned and cooperatively operated brands model a future in which mezcaleros can maintain ancestral and ecologically beneficial practices, while still gaining access to an exploding market.

Preserving Ancestral Traditions

Despite her entrepreneurial savvy, Meneses says that Aguerrido’s members “are not businesspeople—we are farming families looking for a market.” The collective’s core members are lifelong mezcaleros, old enough to remember a time when mezcal faced social stigma.

“They were always fighting to continue making mezcal, even though they hid it, even though it was not well paid,” Meneses says. “They feel proud to say, ‘I make a very good mezcal passed down from my grandfather.’” The four maestros—Don Refugio, Don Ciro, Don Tomás and Don Antonio—carry on their families’ traditions in their own techniques, which in turn inform Aguerrido’s ethos.

Each co-op member complies with mutually established growing, harvesting, and production regulations. Because of agave’s long lifespan, some mezcal producers succumb to the temptation of harvesting immature, unripe agave. These plants have lower sugar content, which requires more of them to produce the same volume.

Rather than “looting the hills,” Meneses says, Aguerrido’s members select only mature plants for production. They plant more agave than they harvest, and all replanting is carried out with close attention to the ecosystem as a whole. “That is another agreement, that you must reforest—but without damaging the ecosystem, removing woody trees, or damaging the soil.”

The members of Aguerrido raise their fists as a nod to the cooperative’s logo, symbolizing their desire to raise their voices and fight to preserve their traditions. (Photo courtesy of Aguerrido)

The mezcal production season runs from February to June. Then they turn their attention to cultivating other crops such as corn and squash. Meneses says this choice is part of Aguerrido’s effort to maintain soil health and biodiversity, despite the larger growing trend among producers and growers to monocrop agave. The group’s vision is “to protect our mezcal precisely from people who only seek a particular benefit for themselves.”

And instead of focusing on short-term profit, she says they’re working to produce mezcal as they always have—in small batches with ancestral techniques.

Member-led Sustainable Practices

Bordering Guerrero is the state of Oaxaca, the beating heart of Mexico’s mezcal industry. Oaxaca accounts for 85 percent of mezcal production and is also where mezcal’s ecological impact is most visible. “Communities are becoming like dust bowls because of monoculture of agave,” says Niki Nakazawa, co-founder of Neta Spirits.

But this isn’t the case everywhere. In Logoche, a 110-person village in Oaxaca’s Sierra Sur region, traditional practices still rule the day. Neta Spirits represents the 12-family cooperative Grupo Productor Logoche. Neta purchases from the producers and commercializes the mezcal under the Neta brand. The 12 member families oversee everything else, from planting to distilling to bottling to labeling. An elected committee, appointed by the cooperative, organizes the bottling and labeling process.

Unlike some neighboring communities, producers in the village of Logoche prioritize the long-term health of the land. Members plant their fields with multiple varieties of agave in alternating rows to preserve genetic diversity and insulate the crops from disease and pests. They use the milpa system of rotational planting, which includes crops like corn, beans, and squash to enrich the soil and prevent erosion. Using goat and donkey manure, they prepare natural fertilizers to replenish the fields.

The cooperative also follows the indigenous custom of harvesting agave during the full moon, when they believe the plant’s heart or piña is most concentrated with sugar. Pooling their labor, resources, and profits allows the cooperative to preserve ancestral—and often more labor-intensive—methods.

Community members in the village of Logoche work collectively to roast the agave hearts that will then be crushed and fermented before distillation. 

(Photo courtesy of Aguerrido)

Though much larger, Banhez Mezcal follows similar cultivation practices. A cooperative of 44 families in Ejutla, Oaxaca, Banhez adheres to a member-established code of conduct that focuses on the sustainable management of their agave fields. Its collaborative structure also incentivizes responsible production, including better waste management.

Mezcal’s distillation process produces an acidic liquid waste called viñaza, which can pollute local water sources. Not long ago, one Banhez member built his palenque—distillation site—in a location that impacted local groundwater. When the community realized that viñaza was threatening its water quality, the member took out a loan from Banhez and rebuilt the palenque elsewhere.

“When you look at the brands that are able to maintain environmental ethics, it’s really down to ownership,” says Alex Jandernoa, director of education at Banhez. “In order to move [a palenque], you have to keep producing mezcal. If you’re not part of a cooperative, you can’t move. You don’t have the money; you don’t have the safety net.”

Rooted in Indigenous Values

In some cases, it’s less the cooperative business model and more a community’s cooperatively held values that insulate producers from market pressure. Nakazawa says Grupo Productor Logoche’s collective ethos is rooted primarily in traditional customs. Logoche, like hundreds of Oaxaca’s municipalities, is governed by two systems: the federal government and customary indigenous laws called usos y costumbres. Grupo Productor Logoche’s cooperation, Nakazawa says, “is rooted in older ways of participation.”

In communities governed by customary indigenous law, “people participate directly in the well-being of other members of the community and in the stewardship of the land.” Every village member participates in communal work, called tequio, in lieu of paying taxes at the local level. Because mezcal is Logoche’s main industry, everyone pitches in at some step during production, and pricing is set by community consensus. “The idea of cooperativism and collectivism is really embedded in those forms of political participation,” says Nakazawa.

The Cooperative Potential

From a commercial perspective, Meneses believes that cooperatively owned brands have an advantage in their product diversity. In the case of Aguerrido, each bottle is a unique representation of the local ecosystem, the agave, and the producer’s skill. “[Consumers] can find diversity in expressions from each producer,” she says.

Maestros del Mezcal, a nongovernmental organization representing hundreds of small producers across Mexico, provides financial and technical support to preserve traditional production practices and protect the land from exploitation. Maestros recently launched a collective brand under the label MDM Asociación Civil, exporting its first shipment to the U.S. last year.

Members of Grupo Productor Logoche gather in their cooperatively owned and managed bottling plant. (Photo courtesy of Aguerrido)

“I do think collective brands can help preserve tradition—by pooling fiscal and regulatory resources and providing easier access to the markets, which is much more costly and time consuming for just one person to do,” says co-organizer Rion Toal. He thinks it’s a model that could be applied successfully to other Mexican products for export. In the case of coffee, for example, “if small producers were able to form co-ops and roast their own beans and legally export them, they could make a lot more money per kilo.”

As pressure from foreign demand mounts, Mexico’s mezcal producers face a choice: turn to industrialized methods and damaging cultivation practices for quick economic gain or differentiate by preserving and promoting ancestral methods. The cooperative model makes the latter option easier. Collective ownership helps producers preserve mezcal’s roots, without losing a foothold in the market.

Meneses says that Aguerrido’s cooperative model looks beyond turning a short-term profit and focuses on the community’s future in mezcal production. “The idea is to be aware, to use good practices—not just right now but also for the future, for the new generations.”

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Annelise Jolley is a San Diego-based writer and editor who covers food, farming, travel, and the terrain in between. 

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