So…. as I was saying…
Yeah..
Its easy to trick Arabs into purchasing anything labeled oud, so long as they are oblivious to what “oud” is. People who are new to oud will almost definately lose a big chunk of money because of its expensive reputation. In fact, some ouds can cost less than $40 a kilo, but many people don’t know that.
Someone might say “In the Arab world, ‘Oud’ is a fragrance category — not the more-precious-than-gold essential oil of the Aquilaria tree. It is a type of smell — not a type of ingredient that is extracted from a particular substance in a particular way.” (Oriscent)
This is true in some ways… Oud has become a category of fragrance in some parts of the arab world and really it hasn’t in others. Arabs have been using essential oils for quite some time now and they all understand the difference between natural and synthetic oils, but in many countries like Yemen, Jordan, Oman (and other poor Arab countries) cannot afford agarwood as their affluent persian gulf counter-parts can. That is the reason why they purchase synthetic agarwood, which right now EVERYONE should embrace because agarwood species all over the world are threatened due to overharvesting.
Basically, there is this ignorant fool blogging about how “ARABS” are evil when it comes time to agarwood. Really, its not the Arabs. He’s only merely creating fairy-tales about how agarwood is aduleterated by the Arabs when its not so he can get some sales. See most agarwood that enters the middle east, come in the form of agarwood oil and agarwood chips, and rarely as agarwood dust. There are two main RE-EXPORT routes into the middle east: Singapore and India.
India is probably the biggest cheater when it comes to agarwood because they’ve had decades of experience doing exactly that (cheating). According to Indian government documents, harvesting Indian agarwood has had some restrictions for quite some time now. India relies mainly on south east asia to channel its agarwood (including Singapore re-exports) into India and then subsequently into Arabia. According to a CITES article, “Heart of the Matter: Agarwood Use and Trade and CITES Implementation for Aquilaria Malaccensis”, India is now acting as a main processing center for agarwood from range states since natural stocks have been largely depleted from overexploitation.
According to the same article mentioned above, Indians are experts at adulterating agarwood. They have built an experience of magestically mixing iron powder with agarwood chips so that weight increases, carbon powder from spent batteries in order to increase cosmetic looks of high quality, and the mixing of ‘lodh’ oil and about five to six other chemicals have all been used in adulterating agarwood…
So anonymous says: “So what, that still doesn’t rule out the possibility agarwood is being adulterated in Arabia!” and I say.. you’re right mister anonymous. Still in Arabia, the major oud dealers come from India and the major workforce is also Indian. They too bring their operations into Arabia and do the same exact thing.
I do not rule out the possibility Arabs are adulterating agarwood, but I feel that they are being victimized in order to create profits.
Some Middle Easterners may be adulterating agarwood, but generally speaking, they are the victims of deceptive agarwood dealers. Most Arabs are merely end-users of agarwood, not producers. It only points more evidence towards agarwood suppliers that they are the ones who indeed like to cheat.. which may be a good thing?
Agarwood supplies are only meeting 1/4th to 1/3rd of worldly demands all over the world and yet with all this cheating going on, people still cannot feed their appetite for agarwood. So, even though cheating agarwood customers may be a bad thing, its good in some ways because it may help slow down the deforestation process until we can find a solution to this agarwood mess.
OK. So my point is… please you BFL (big-fat-liar), you know who you are; I hope you’re reading this. STOP STOP STOP lying to your customers about agarwood and feeding them false information.
NOTE: I’m sorry for offending any Indians. I don’t mean to stereotype any people, but my the point of my article is that agarwood suppliers, mainly India, are the ones to blame for agarwood adulteration.
