Before you reach for that cheaper oil, here’s something to consider:
It takes 139 acres of Melissa (lemon balm) to produce 5 gallons of essential oil.
It takes two to three years from the time of planting to harvest (for both lavender and melissa). During that time, weeding and fertilizing can be a time and cost consuming process or it can be done with “organic” chemicals.
Young Living chooses to do everything by hand. At the St. Marie’s farm in Idaho, 12 workers plant 250,000 plants all by hand and do all the weeding. This increases production costs but provides an oil free of “organic” herbicides. Each plant is handled by a worker about 13 times from start to finish. That is unheard of in this industry.
At St. Marie’s, the plants are watered by snowfall kept in a reservoir. Only pure mountain water. The harvested plants are flipped on the distillery deck to stress it and draw out more oil. Then distillery time is customized for each batch to draw out the most and best possible oil.
Leftover plant material goes to mulch pile and then back into the fields. Nothing is wasted.
Years ago when the Young Living workers were distilling clary sage, the “cooker” (distiller—YL has their own unlike other companies) had a malfunction. The half-distilled clary sage sat in it while they decided what to do. Founder Gary Young said to leave it in there so they did. Once they started everything back up and distilled it longer, they made an amazing discovery.
They discovered that letting the clary sage sit like that greatly increased the sclerol content of the finished oil. Sclerol is a very beneficial constituent in clary sage oil.
It changed it so much that when the tests were released, other companies accused YL of adulterating the oil because of the high sclerol content. The other companies’ third-party labs depend on a standard library of results and anything out of those parameters are labeled as adulterated. But in reality that just shows the power of being able to customize and tweak the distillation process for a better product, something only YL does!!
AND Young Living has the largest database for testing essential oils because of the way they’ve done this with many plant oils!
You won’t get that kind of optimization for the best therapeutic oil anywhere else! (In fact, many other companies not only don’t have the extra therapeutic properties and constituents but are even missing some of the ones that should be present in an essential oil due to cheaper distillation processed. Those plant oils then lose the natural synergy they are meant to have for our health.)
Did you also know?!!
Transporting herbs to distillation facilities hundreds or thousands of miles away heightens the risk of the plants having exposure to pollutants, dust, mold, and petrochemical residues.
To prevent herbs from drying out and being contaminated, distillation facilities should be located as close to the field as possible.
And no company prioritizes this like Young Living! Young Living is the only essential oil company to own state-of-the art distilleries around the world directly on the farm locations! This is another reason why Young Living's essential oils retain the most therapeutic benefits!
Young Living's Mona, Utah lavender farm and distillery is the largest privately-owned distillery in the world.
Young Living has farms with distilleries on site across the world!
BUT:
You ever hear of other oil companies saying they get their oils from the same places we get some of ours?
A number of years ago, the founder of Young Living, Gary Young, was in France and visited one of the lavender farms they were partnering with for YL oil. He sat down in the office of the owner, who handed him a bottle of lavender oil. “This is this year’s lavender,” the owner told him.
Gary opened it and smelled. “Oh NO!” thought Gary, “This is TERRIBLE!” He could tell that the oil was missing important molecules and it just didn’t smell right at all! He looked at the owner, who started laughing and said, “That’s not the lavender you’re getting. Here is the lavender you’re getting.” And he handed him another bottle. “Whew!” said Gary. “This is great!”
The owner said, “The other oil is going to a new essential oil company that just opened in Utah...”
So even if some other companies can sometimes get oils from the same farms we use (they can’t get from our corporate farms but some of our Seed to Seal certified farms sell oils we don’t use to other companies), be assured that they don’t care about the quality of the oils they’re getting - all they care about is price.
To clarify questions that may arise—As some of you know, YL has many of their own corporate-owned farms and partner farms that provide the bulk of the oils. Some come from Seed to Seal certified farms that have had to be vetted through YL’s strict guidelines. These suppliers can sell to others as well.
Another story to demonstrate that—Three years ago, a Seed to Seal certified supplier had an expensive oil that YL tested rigorously as always and it was found to have trace amounts of mercury. YL rejected this batch and it was then bought up by one (or more) of the other companies. This is why the rigorous testing YL does which other companies do not do is so key.
Young Living tests EVERY oil THREE times with all those tests you see below.:
Every oil that comes to our labs from our partner, owned and Seed to Seal certified farms, are tested. If they don't meet the company’s stringent standards, they are sent back and they collaborate on the issue at hand.
If you want to make sure you’re getting the most therapeutic, beneficial essential oils, there’s only one choice.