https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/11-o...
https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/business/europe/top-italian-po...
I.e. https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-net... found widespread fraud and put measures in place to prevent it, but it continues to be challenging.
> According to the sampling and monitoring work carried out by the Brussels-based body, almost 50% of the honey from non-European countries is cut with sugar syrups made from rice, wheat or sugar beet.
> All the 10 honeys entered via the United Kingdom were marked “non-compliant” and mixed with imports from Mexico, Ukraine and Brazil.
> Apart from the main fraudulent addition of sugar syrups, the report also alerts of the presence of additives and colorings and the falsification of traceable information.
So yeah, a considerable part of honey contains more than what's on the label and often isn't of the origin written on the label. As for outrageous, it is — beekeepers have been sounding the alarm on this issue for years — but nothing has been done to stop this on the policy side.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2023/03/24/hal...
That aside, yeah, this is a real problem with honey (and maple syrup) in the US. Food manufacturers will go to insane lengths to get around any laws that protect product purity and honest labeling because the profits are far greater than the fine for breaking the rules.
As we all know, if the punishment is a fine, it's only illegal for companies that cannot afford to pay...like the guy at the farmer's market with the mason jars.
What I suspect is more common and isn’t as bad is that someone operates as a consumer brand/storefront for several small scale local farms. Given the variety of produce sold at so many of the farmers’ markets stalls in CA, and that most of it does indeed seem artisanal (ie not the kind you’d see in a grocery store), locally growable, and in-season I’m pretty sure this is commonplace.
There’s just no way a “down to earth local grower” could farm 15+ different kinds of crops at the scale required to operate one or more farmer’s market stalls multiple days a week, and operate the stalls. You’d need a big operation for that to not be a logistical nightmare. That said, if a vendor is just selling one or two things that keep well (like honey) it seems totally feasible that they’re truly a “down to earth local grower” although that also means they’re “possibly a complete amateur/fraud”
it is sort of cheating
> Of 123 honey exporters to Europe, 70 are suspected of having adulterated their products, and out of 95 European importers checked, two-thirds are affected by at least one suspect batch.
This is only one example, similar stings elsewhere have likewise found bleak results.
As the son of a beekeeper I can attest to this, the honey you find at a grocery store and what actually comes out of a hive are very different things. Even if you boil natural honey you still don't get the texture and consistency they have at the store.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2023/03/24/hal...
Our local supermarket sells honey from a local beekeeper that we've also bought honey from directly before. Only that one local supermarket has their honey and it's closer to us than driving to the beekeeper. And yes it has a nice looking but plain label on the jar.
He is probably mostly right about large quantity, imported honey tho.
An EU investigation published last year found 46% of imported sampled products were suspected to be fraudulent, including all 10 from the UK. Samples used in October by the UK branch of the Honey Authenticity Network for a novel form of DNA testing found that 24 out of 25 jars from big UK retailers were suspicious.
That said, this old article seems to think its not as common a problem as you would expect: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/11/25/142659547/re...
Plus the honey is so delicious. When I visited she gave me this little container of the foam that collects on top of the raw honey. It was delicious, I ate a little spoonful of it every day until it ran out.
I don't work for them, I don't get money from them, I'm just an enthusiastic long-term customer.
Champlain Valley Apiaries: https://www.champlainvalleyhoney.com/
I cannot recommend them enough.
And in 2024, if he does not accept cash, it might probably because he is happy to not declare all his incomes. That is a bad sign if you expect such a guy to be honest to not mess with his honey!
I get my honey from a local beekeeper who delivers to my door. He welcomes people to tour his farm to see how it's produced.
He also sells his honey in the local chain supermarkets. Your broad generalization is false.
If 1/3 of the honey in the store is fake, but you don’t know which 1/3 is fake, then what is the point of buying any honey at that store? If you need advice about where to buy pure honey because you don’t personally know the farmer then, “treat everything at the grocery store as suspect” is fine advice.
If you have personally toured an apiary, know the keeper, and happen to know that he sells at a few grocery stores as well, you don’t need the advice, and your addition isn’t helpful since the end result is the same: the average person can’t trust the honey at their large grocery store, and they should find a local beekeeper.
Unverifiable provenance in both cases..
Sugar syrup or even honey adulterated with sugar syrup behaves differently. I’ve had some cheap generic brand bottles that flowed too easily, dissolved too quickly, and never crystallized. Probably sugar syrup.
But I haven’t seen this once since over a decade ago in my college days when I shopped at some questionable neighborhood supermarkets.
Everything I’ve bought from local supermarkets and chains like Costco has felt, looked, flowed, tasted, and crystallized like real honey.
You should probably be more suspicious about those roadside shops, too. With the rise of “farmers’ markets” as a side hustle you can no longer tell what’s what just by the fact that they’re operating out of a stand and taking cash. Around here, a lot of the “farmers’ market” and even roadside stand operators are reselling products they get from other entrepreneurs who sell them the produce, honey, and other goods. There’s a group of people here who have roadside stands with signs spray painted by hand to look like mom and pop DIY operations, which tricks people until they realize those exact signs are in 100s of locations across the state. It’s just another business preying on people’s lack of trust in institutions but implicit trust in anything that feels mom and pop, just like your comment implies.
Two of the supermarkets in the UK I shop in have their own brand "Spanish Forest Honey", that claims to be single source from Spain. I have no reason to not trust that it is yet. It is about x2-3 more expensive than the big mainstream brands, darker and tastes stronger.
The Spanish producers could be adding sugar syrup as well I suppose, but aside from hunting down honey from farmers markets it's the best option I have.
>said the UK should require importers to label the country of origin on all honey, including blends
It actually does require that, it must specify country of origin and whether it is a blend, if it's a blend then it contains syrup and possibly antibiotics.
Buy single origin which in europe is certainly available, in the UK avoid anything that has the line "a blend of EU and non-EU honey", you should be buying UK honey anyway if you're UK-based, it is better and not blended (except where fraud has been committed as in the article).
Most of the honey is in canning jars, with a home printed label. The claim is it is sourced locally, and there are significant variations in color and taste over the year.
Is he scamming me and buying fake honey on Amazon and re-packaging it to look artisinal? Maybe. But I am convinced it is the real deal.
Can people see and taste the differences between (a) sugar syrup and (b) dehydrated flower nectar and liquid sugars? Certainly in the case of small scale harvesting in a traditional hive: it will be have ground up comb, dead bee parts and gas that, in my opinion, adds little.
Sometimes bees get into stuff like a cherry syrup factory and they barf out blue food coloring into the cells which dehydrate and become blue honey, which you can also see.
Do people physiologically interact with something in the honey other than its sugar? Like is there something missing from sugar syrup? One clinically proven difference is that honey is an effective antibiotic on wounds whereas sugar syrup is not. Of course besides antibiotics in the honey, the bee barfs out other stuff that gets in there that can affect the development of bees, and trace amounts of pollen and bee poop get in it too, but I don’t think any of that interacts with us.
It’s a complex problem. You can easily read more about it, bees are well studied animals. For most culinary purposes you don’t want weird solids, moisture, gas and contaminants like that, so industrial honey suits people better anyway. But if you are applying it to a wound you want bee produced honey without comb, which readily exists in the medical supply chain. It is not accurate to say that the small town seller is the only source, or even the best source, of “real honey.”
Should you fail (illegal pesticides, ingredients differ than label, too much lead, whatever) then you lose your deposit, all profits made that year on that product, and go through a process of re-earning the right to sell that product.
For small local brands I'd exempt them until the economics became viable.
what you’re looking for is deeper analysis than nutrition labels. this is actually something small local brands start with. they pay for private “certifications” like organic, non gmo, etc.
What is involved in that inspection and what does it take to actually fully fail it? Is it like most government tests where the first failure means you just have to fix the problems and schedule your retest?
> they pay for private “certifications” like organic, non gmo, etc.
As a consumer these have the _least_ value out of anything on the label to me.
Why would they suddenly become viable? The only way that would happen is if the price of the product is increased to cover the costs of what you're proposing. This will destroy small suppliers and increase the cost of everything to cover a set of risks that you haven't even fully characterized yet.
Why don't we see more private enforcement? Class action lawsuits against fraudulent producers and distributors?
This stuff sticks out because it’s getting caught and called out. There was a time when information spread slowly, tracking supply chains was basically impossible, and many businesses would do shady things because they knew they were unlikely to get caught.
Now we can sample things like honey with lab equipment that is basically magic compared to technology 50 years ago, so these things are getting caught. We also have the internet to share stories, so they’re getting seen.
So while people are becoming more aware, I think these things are actually better than in the past.
However, pick up a high value product and it’s likely to be some effectively identical fake while still being sold by the company it says on the box. An expensive restaurant is quite likely to be selling you fish when it says it’s fish but it may not be the correct species of fish etc etc.
Eating at a random food truck is safe because we care a lot about safety, but let the buyer beware around just about anything else.
You are correct. At least in the United States.
There was a university agronomist on the radio a couple of weeks ago talking about how people get all worked up about food recalls. They act like there are more of them than ever before.
She said the amazing thing is that there aren't more recalls, since we produce and consume so much food than ever with so much involved in the process.
She says the system isn't perfect (no system ever is), but it's far better than what we've had in the past and the results are remarkable.
I lived in a developing country in Asia and the number of food safety concerns that popped up was far, far lower than what you see in the West.
When another foreigner mentioned how "safe" the food was, I said "yeah, concerns don't pop up because nobody is looking for them".
So sure, the pursuit of profits is impactful; but the lack of repercussions (when making choices that hurt others) is a pretty major player, too.
I get annoyed at "capitalism is bad for the environment" because it ignores the Soviets' environmental devastation, which was done in the name of improving society. The truth is that environmentalism is a distinct ideology from purely economic concerns, and it wasn't until the 60s that environmentalism became a left-liberal agenda item. I think it is similar with authoritarianism versus democracy. Democratic capitalists work for their workers; authoritarian capitalists work for their investors.
One of the most ancient examples of the written words we have is from a copper merchant complaining about the quality of the ingots he received[1]. The tablet could just as easily have been a complaint about the quality of honey purchased.
This is a reversion to the mean.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nāṣir
What you may actually be witnessing is a low awareness society turn into a high awareness one. What is being highlighted is you never should have had that trust in the first place.
Actual snake oil in the 1800s came from Chinese water snakes, and Chinese laborers who immigrated to the U.S. shared it with fellow workers as they helped build the transcontinental railroad. This type of snake oil, Pedersen says, was indeed an effective anti-inflammatory.... Enter the mysterious Clark Stanley in 1893.... Standing on stage in front of a growing crowd, Stanley pulled a rattlesnake out of a sack resting near his feet. In dramatic fashion, he slit the rattlesnake open with a knife, placed the snake in a vat of boiling water, and watched as its fat rose to the surface. Stanley sold his product, dubbed “Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment,” in liniment jars, boasting about its healing powers. Of course, Stanley’s snake oil was a marketing gimmick from the very start.
Stanley's oil's actual ingredients: "mineral oil, beef fat, red pepper and turpentine". (Above article).
His and others' deceptive practices lead to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
<https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-snake-oil-beca...>
Wikpedia has more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil>
PE squeezing hospitals, nursing homes, and rent is a new thing. Look at rents - the inflation of them is not something that happened in the past.
Fixed that for you.
As a consumer, I want a regulated market. I want product safety and a lack of fraud.
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This is a purely subjective process. Different people like different things.
Honey is as varied as the forage that it's produced from.
This whole process of determining a "We're #1" is just a symptom of the autistic ape.
the mistaken belief is that there is something special about natural honey. people: it's sugar syrup, it'll give you diabetes as fast as a truckload of mountain dew.
Now, I don't believe in homeopathy, perhaps you do. But that's what the honey cult is, homeopathic. What the govt should allow is the sale of labelled fake honeys, it would be dirt cheap and would taste indetectably different, i.e every bit as good, and no more unhealthy.
(if you don't like the viscosity of your sugar syrup, change the %age of water. if you want it to crystalize, dry it out. it's rock candy, not magic)
Just facts [0]:
- honey contains antioxidants, amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) and vitamins and minerals, such as Thiamin, riboflavin, pyridoxin, vitamin A, niacin, panthothenic acid, phyllochinon, vitamin E, and vitamin C
- honey also has been successfully used for wound and burn healing. (If you grab a frying pan or burn your hand/skin, apply honey, there will be no blisters or peeling skin.)
- honey consumption reduces risk factors of cardiovascular diseases
[0] https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/the-sweet-science-behind-honey...
That's factually incorrect. First of all, obviously it has tons of extra flavor, which indicates a whole range of additional chemical compounds.
> But that's what the honey cult is, homeopathic.
Honey has scientifically proven antibiotic properties [1].
> adulterated honey is difficult to detect
I don't know what you mean by "difficult", but it can certainly be detected [2]. And it can be observed how the antimicrobial properties diminish as adulteration increases.
Now, does this mean honey has health benefits when you eat it? Not necessarily. The antibiotic properties have traditionally been utilized when applying honey on top of a wound to prevent infection -- not by eating it.
You may very well be right that consuming honey isn't any different from consuming HFCS. But it does have a lot of additional chemical compounds in it (as the antibiotic properties demonstrate), so the best answer is that we really don't know.
In any case, it is demonstrably not "just sugar syrup". But yes, you're probably correct that it will give you diabetes just as fast as Mountain Dew.
>But it does have a lot of additional chemical compounds in it
if a jar of honey had one sloughed off cell from the colon of a honeybee, it would have "a lot of additional chemical compounds in it" because there are a lot of chemical compounds in a single cell. As a percentage of a jar of honey it's trace amounts. Govt standards for selling grains specify the acceptable quantities of rodent feces and insect parts, because it's not practical to take those numbers to zero. Nobody talks about the benefits of eating grain because of trace chemicals from that. I'm not saying trace amounts don't matter, I'm saying evidence based or gtfo.
I'm not saying don't look at it, I'm saying be reasonable and don't draw conclusions without conclusive evidence. One piece of conclusive evidence we have is that it is extremely difficult for scientists to tell the difference between authentic and adulterated honey, and it requires extreme measures not generally taken for foodstuffs, measures never said to be indicative of nutritional value.
>(as the antibiotic properties demonstrate)
no, any antibiotic properties would not demonstrate "a lot of additional chemical compounds". A chemical antibiotic component might be found to be a single compound.
I'm not saying people are not allowed to establish a religious cult of honey and have kosher-honey rules; I'm saying that for people not in the cult, the difficulty of telling the differences makes you wonder what you're hoping to find out, or why you should pay high prices, and as a practical matter makes it very difficult to police the marketplace.
the honey market in terms of fraud is much much worse off than the olive oil market. Some people could take advantage of this in their personal lives by switching to fake honey.
Topical antibiotic properties. Eating honey won't cure anything.
In addition to flavour compounds from the nectar, honey contains trace amino acids that cause it to slowly undergo the malliard reaction at room temperature, resulting in a caramel undertone that increases as the honey ages.
The flavour also strongly depends on the nectar, with some being very subtle and resulting in a very syrup-like honey, and others being extremely strong.
Other than flavour, and some anti-microbial properties, it has the same dietary properties as sugar syrup.
you have completely missed the plot, it's sad.
I'm not talking about what I think of the taste of honey. I'm simply reading (with comprehension) TFA (and many similar articles over the past 30 years) that say that the honey market is filled with adulteration and it's difficult to control because there are few ways to tell the difference. The world's biggest experts on honey say this, not me.
I'm just pointing out what they say to you because you can't read.
You seriously seem to believe that industry experts have to cancel international events because you can taste honey and they can't.
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13197-019-035...
Its mostly sugar water (syrup), but there is more to it.
Be sure to tell the authors of this article and the officials at these judging conventions that you don't know what they're on about.
As for why blockchain: if you did this on a regular database, you'd be trusting a third party to run that database. Businesses tend not to like that, because sooner or later it gets hard to switch away and the third party starts charging a lot more money.
