Since the cost of EO’s seems to vary widely, I’ve been looking around on the web. As MissusLeata said, I cannot afford to purchase them from some of the companies like doTerra or Young Living. Some here have mentioned “therapeutic grade” oils, and I found an article on the site she mentioned, Beeyoutiful, where the question of certification is addressed. Here is an excerpt from that article, and I wondered if some of you might comment on it.
“If I ask somebody if a product is “organic”, what I mean is “certified organic”. See there is a standard set by a committee of farmers and industry. They meet and vote on changes to the standards every year. Then several agencies are in place that review practices and procedures, do testing, and certify a farm, and its produce as “organic”. You might have something that is not certified, but a farmer will say it was grown “organically” or according to organic specifications.
There is no such system for essential oils. There is no standards committee. There are no independent certifying agencies. You will see some companies have actually trademarked their terms, “therapeutic grade” or “medicinal grade”. This is marketing on their part, a way of differentiating themselves from the competition and making people feel like the oils they are getting are of the highest quality while others meet lower standards. But there are no standards. There are no grades for essential oils. Certainly not all oils are of the same quality, and while there are a couple of things you can do at home to spot really low quality or highly diluted oils, there really is no way to find out the quality of most oils short of sending samples for testing. It is not like beef where you have grade A, certified by the USDA.”
I’m just beginning to look into EO’s, so all of this is interesting to me. Beeyoutiful has in the description of their EO’s the term “GC/IR verified.” I have contacted them to ask for an explanation of this, as the information I found about gas chromatography (the GC part) made my head hurt. Now I wish I had some peppermint oil handy to rub on my temples….