What We Found When We Tested Everything

Our dates go to a lab before we package them and send them to you. 

Not because we were worried. Because we wanted to know - and because you deserve more than our word for it.

We sent a sample of our harvest to Laboratories in Muscat, an ISO/IEC 17025-accredited facility, and asked them to test it against GSO 656:2014. The full report came back clean. Here's what that actually means.

394 pesticides. Zero detected.

The lab screened for 394 individual pesticide compounds using LC-MS and GC-MS analysis - the kind of testing that catches residue at trace levels, not just the obvious ones.

Every single result came back the same way: not detected.

We're not only going to tell you our dates are "pesticide-free", we going to back our words - we'd rather be precise than impressive.  When 394 compounds were tested for, across a comprehensive chemical screen, none were found. That's not a marketing line. It's a lab result, and see the report here.

The other results that matter

Pesticides get the headline, but they weren't the only thing tested:

• Salmonella - absent
• E. coli - below detectable levels
• Yeast and mould - well under the allowable limit
• Living insects, foreign matter, pest damage - none found

These are the tests that determine whether a food is safe to eat, full stop. They're also the tests that a lot of dried fruit on US shelves is never asked to pass in a way you can actually see. Most dates sold here move through long, blended supply chains - different farms, different countries, different harvests, repacked and relabeled before they ever reach a store. There's often no single certificate you could ask for, because there's no single source to test.

Ours is one farm. One harvest. One report, with our name on it.

What the moisture number tells you

One detail worth pointing out even though it looks small on the page: our Khalas came in at 15.08% moisture, well under the 30% ceiling for this variety. Lower moisture in a soft date generally means a longer natural shelf life and less risk of the stickiness or clumping that comes from excess moisture - without needing anything added to get there. It's one more sign this fruit was handled and dried carefully, not rushed to market.

Why we're telling you this

If you're eating dates as real fuel - before a long ride, on a trail, between meetings when you need something better than a candy bar - you're trusting that what's in the bag is exactly what it looks like. Whole fruit. Nothing added. Nothing you'd need to worry about.

That trust shouldn't be an assumption. It should be something we can show you.

This is the first of what will be an ongoing habit for us: every harvest, tested, and the results shared - not buried in a supplier file somewhere, but right here.

Provenance isn't just a nice word for us. It's the reason we can tell you exactly which farm, which harvest, and exactly what a lab found when they looked closely.

The full test report is available here. We're proud of it.