A team of “coffee cops” is cracking down on retail outlets that are selling bogus Blue Mountain Coffee in violation of the product’s prized trademark.

The crackdown was provoked by complaints that increasing numbers of retailers are selling bogus Blue Mountain Coffee. In other cases, the coffee is being marketed by vendors who do not have approval from the Coffee Industry Board to sell Blue Mountain Coffee.

The Coffee Industry Board’s responsibilities include the protection of Blue Mountain Coffee trademark, which ensures its quality.

In their first enforcement action last Friday, a team headed by Dr Cecil Goodridge, director-general of the Coffee Industry Board’s enforcement division, walked into several retail outlets in Negril, Westmoreland. Two members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force accompanied them.

Goodridge said the bogus coffee can easily give Blue Mountain Coffee a bad name. When unsuspecting buyers get stuck with bogus “Blue Mountain”, they end up thinking Blue Mountain Coffee is not all it’s cracked up to be.

“American tourists will buy the coffee and think that the Blue Mountain coffee has slipped in quality,” he said.

In Negril, Goodridge said, the team snatched 43 bags of Blue Mountain Coffee off the shelves of various outlets. The coffee either was not legitimate Blue Mountain coffee or was produced by firms that lacked the proper certification from the Coffee Industry Board, which strictly regulates the sale of Jamaica’s prized coffee.

In another instance, the team found packages of coffee that falsely claimed to be 100 per cent organic.

Goodridge noted that genuine Blue Mountain Coffee sells for up to US $20 per pound, but that the bogus product confiscated in Negril was being sold for US$10 per pound.

“Tourists think they are getting a deal, but they are not,” he said.

Goodridge said retailers from whom bogus Blue Mountain Coffee was confiscated were “co-operative” when the reason for the enforcement action was explained to them. They will have to take up the issue with their suppliers, who provided them the bogus coffee, he said.

“We are going to continue with this (enforcement action) until we clean up the market,” Goodridge said.