What grade is your shea butter?

I love your Shea butter but I am wondering what grade is it considered?

There is no official grading system for shea butter but I found this on the web:

The United States Agency for International Development and other companies have suggested a classification system for shea butter separating it into five grades:

  • A (raw or unrefined, extracted using water)
  • B (refined)
  • C (highly refined and extracted with solvents such as hexane)
  • D (lowest uncontaminated grade)
  • E (with contaminants)

Commercial grades are A, B, and C. The color of raw (grade A) butter ranges from cream (like whipped butter) to grayish yellow. It has a nutty aroma which is removed in the other grades. Grade C is pure white. While the level of vitamin content can be affected by refining, up to 95% of vitamin content can be removed from refined grades (i.e., grade C) of shea butter while reducing contamination levels to undetectable levels.

Our shea butter starts out as raw village made (A). Then it gets filtered under pressure through natural clay (bleaching clay), neutralized with organic citric acid and super filtered. This would then be (B) lightly refined and also certified to organic food standards. The filtering processes removes the latex in raw shea butter which can be a big issue for latex sensitive people and removes excess water, insects, wood ashes and sometimes bicycle parts from the shea butter which increases shelf life.

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