Finally--a place specializing in the real thing--Certified Bird Friendly coffee!! Check out Birds & Beans.
There are only two officially certified coffees--the Smithsonian's Bird Friendly, and the Rainforest Alliance. Unfortunately, coffee sold with the Rainforest Alliance doesn't need to be 100 percent certified, so a significant part of one of their blends isn't necessarily grown to the high standards that the Smithsonian Institution requires for their certification. And other coffees, even if they have a lovely bird on the package, aren't necessarily grown using the best practices for birds. "Shade-grown" can refer to a monoculture of canopy trees with no bromeliads and virtually no diversity. If you can't find genuine, certified Bird Friendly coffee in your neck of the woods, you can order it directly from Birds & Beans. That's what I'm going to be doing from now on.
