Does YL Post Test Results
No. And for good reason. It is far too easy to take a test result and copy it in a lab with synthetics to make it look good... good enough for an untrained person to think it is all okay.
Ready to read a lab report?
When oil companies publish results, people don't know what they are looking at, but it makes them "feel good". In the world of essential oils and testing, it is much more complicated than that. Another company could taint results to make them "look just like YL"... and people wouldn't know any better.
The way that YL grows, harvests, distills, and sources our oils ensures that they have specific percentages of many many constituents. Oils from carefully and painstakenly picked seed to seal suppliers are to chosen meet certain criteria. Test results would show exactly what those constituents and percentages are.
Again, other companies can try to "copy" a YLEO if all the test results are published. The bottom line is that natural substances that are left unaltered with synthetics cannot be patented. So YL cannot protect what they consider to be the ideal constituents at specific percentages for a specific EO for others to not try to "copy" (be it by adding synthetics to their oils or mixing different oils together)
By keeping their test results private, they are protecting their trade secrets. I’m OK with this because I have been to the farms and seen the entire Seed to Seal Process.
Now, with that being said, YL HAS gone ahead and published test results in the past when they felt it necessary. They have done it before, and exposed a third party lab (that was accusing them of synthetics) that was not properly conducting their tests and not properly cleaning their test equipment... which their own test results the published exposed... of course, all untrained eyes would never have caught that. The essential oil industry has become pretty cutthroat amongst the other oil companies trying to vie for their "piece of the pie".
If YL were to start publishing all of their test results, I would be scared for all of the people then purchasing EOs from other companies who start saying they have the same exact test results and quality of YLEOs... because who knows what they will have done to their EOs to try to make the tests LOOK the same.
Also, it is way too easy just to copy a test result and make it look like your test result.... PhotoShop even makes that too easy.
What is 3rd Party Testing?
A SUPER important note here is what it truly means to have 3rd party testing. Oil companies make it sound like saying, "3rd party testing" means that there is someone out there certifying the quality AND THAT IS NOT TRUE!!!
3rd party testing means that they are going to a third party to have them run tests (usually only GC/MS and YL does SO MANY more and different types of tests that others do not do) and then the 3rd party hands over the results of the test.
And depending on what types of GC/MS machines they have, the results could show a handful of constituents or sometimes more (but never as much as YL's GC/MS since they were customized for us by the manufacturer to be able to detect HUNDREDS more constituents... go check them out for yourself at the YL Lehi, Utah Corporate Office, the Spanish Fork, Utah warehouse, the YL St. Maries, Idaho farm and distillery, their Highland Flats farm in Idaho, or the YL Ecuador Farm and distillery... and yes, they will demonstrate for you and SHOW you the difference in their testing equipment.
I have seen this firsthand.
These companies with the 3rd party testing have a piece of paper in their hands.
SO WHAT?!!! They then have to have an "essential oil expert" compare those results to some type of standard, or fragrance library. And that usually is AFNOR or ISO standards which DO NOT DETERMINE IF AN OIL IS PURE OR NOT! It is French/European standards developed only to identify WHAT the substance is.... not to determine its purity.
The test does not determine the purity.
BECAUSE we OWN labs and farms and distilleries, YL has been able to do extensive research with essential oils over the past 28+ years and have been able to experiment with the timing of harvests, timing of distillation and at what pressures and temperatures to distill and then test as they go to see EXACTLY how a particular plant needs to be grown, harvested and distilled to have the OPTIMUM chemical constituents at the perfect balance to give us EOs that have a WIDE range of health benefits (and not just a handful of benefits) AND... this is important... because of the perfect balance of the constituents, can be used in extensive ways.
So what does that mean? That Young Living has been able to develop THEIR OWN STANDARDS which FAR exceed ANY type of "standards" worldwide!!! ELSE has done what they have done in investing in farms and distilleries and labs AROUND THE WORLD while doing ongoing, ground-breaking, extensive research tYL truly is THE BEST in the world!!! NO ONEo create the highest quality of essential oils!!! So is it really true and really possible that YL has the market cornered on having the highest quality of essential oils? YES!!!
So with YL getting 3rd party verification, that is only verifying what their GC/MS testing says BUT THEN not even showing the extent of what YL's more advanced testing shows! So really YL does not NEED to do "3rd party testing", but they do it because so many people expect them to, so they spend money on "3rd party testing".
Read more in the Intro part of the Essential Oils Desk Reference. You can see and hear about it in YL's www.SeedtoSeal.com website, AND you can also read a lot about it from the man himself... Gary Young's blog. Find his blog in your Virtual Office in the box with the "Quick Links". And you will learn a LOT about YL's testing!
