Anything worth claiming should be checkable by somebody who has no reason to trust us. This page collects the batch tests, the certifications and the traceability chain behind what we sell — and is equally clear about what each one does not prove.
Five tests decide whether a consignment is packed or held back. They are the same five whether the lot is a hundred kilograms for the shop or a tonne for an importer.
Screened against the maximum residue limits set for spices and dried produce. Most of these hill plots have never had synthetic input on them, so the purpose of the test is to prove that rather than to catch anything.
Lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury. Ground spice is the usual route for metal contamination, and it usually enters downstream of the farm, which is why this test is run after milling rather than before it.
Total plate count, yeast and mould, salmonella and E. coli. Sun-drying is traditional and it works, but it happens outdoors — so this is the test that most often sends a lot back for reprocessing.
Moisture above the stated ceiling invites mould in transit, so every lot is measured before despatch. The adulteration screen looks for the familiar additions to turmeric and ginger powder: starch, chalk, added colour and lead chromate.
Curcumin for turmeric, gingerol for ginger. Where a pack states a figure, that figure comes from the batch inside the pack — not from a variety average, and not from last season.
Eight of the most recent lots to come back from the laboratory. Where the pack declares an active content figure, the tested value sits beside the result.
| Batch | Product | Cooperative | Tested on | Result | Report |
|---|
The code is printed under the seal on every pack.
Five marks appear on the packs in this shop. Each answers a narrow question well and the rest of the questions not at all.
A lot code is only useful if it is assigned before anybody knows how the lot will grade. Ours is assigned first, and it never changes.
Each consignment is given its code at the village collection point, before it is weighed and before it is graded. The code carries the state, the month and a serial. Nothing about it is decided later.
The lot is graded to one published standard at the Guwahati hub. A sample is drawn from several points in the consignment rather than off the top, then sealed and labelled with the same code.
The sample goes to a laboratory Hillroot neither owns nor instructs. The report comes back against the code — pass or fail. A failed lot is returned to the cooperative, not quietly discounted.
The code goes on the pack you receive. Entering it here would return the cooperative, the district, the test date and the report itself. That lookup is the whole point of the chain.
A Geographical Indication is a legal statement about origin. It says a product comes from a defined place, and that the place is part of what the product is — the soil, the altitude, the variety, the method handed down with it. It is held collectively, usually by a growers body, and it cannot be bought, sold or moved somewhere cheaper.
It is not a quality grade. A Geographical Indication tells you where something is from, not how well it was grown this season or whether it was adulterated after milling. That is what the laboratory report is for. The two answer different questions, which is why this page publishes both.
Hillroot holds no Geographical Indication of its own and could not. The registrations belong to the growers bodies in the districts. We sell against them and check every claim against the register, nothing more. products on this shelf are recorded against one.