Great question, we get asked this a lot! We have had the soils at the farms where our cacao is grown tested for heavy metal toxicity - including lead and cadmium and we have each batch of the Ceremonial Cacao end product tested also. The results of the soil testing came back well below the levels regarded as safe by the EU, allowing our suppliers to continue exports to the EU.

About 5 - 6 years ago, the EU found unacceptable heavy metal levels in a number of cacao exports coming from Peru and required a certificate of testing before exports from suppliers could resume. Our farmers had their soils lab tested and they passed easily.

The Ceremonial Cacao end product lab test results were also so low, that Cadmium was almost undetectable and no lead could be detected. 

That's great news for all of us! The question then becomes, why do lead & cadmium exist in cacao / chocolate?

Some elemental forms of cadmium do occur naturally in soils. Some farms soils are also contaminated by previous industry and leeching from other areas. Lead doesn't come from soils, it comes from atmosphere and machinery that harvest and plow soils and from the post harvest processing. I am pleased to say that our farms don't use machinery to prepare soils and harvest (they can't, the geography of the land makes this an impossibility), they use only people power and biodynamic farming methods. This is why no lead could be detected in the lab tests.

There is a lot of complexity to the lead and cadmium debate, which you can read more about here: https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcement/toxic-chocolate if you are interested. It's not as straight forward as it seems. There are also questionable methods for removing it that (in our opinion) may cause more harm than good.