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Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

theguardian.com

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Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#41

Post by throwup238 »

skylurk wrote: post #28
School-Cotton wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know this? Is there actual reporting on what percentage of honey in supermarkets is adulterated, rather than just anecdotal reports that at least some is?

Honey supply chains are opaque and global, plus the incentives to cheat are clearly there and it's hard to definitively prove a batch was not adulterated. I'd say it's fair to be 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...

> "Consumers don't tend to like crystallized honey," says Jill Clark, vice president for sales and marketing at Dutch Gold. "It's very funny. In Canada, there's a lot of creamed honey sold, and people are very accustomed to honey crystallizing. Same in Europe. But the U.S. consumer is very used to a liquid product, and as soon as they see those first granules of crystallization, we get the phone calls: 'Something's wrong with my honey!'"

Anecdotal but everything in that NPR article rings true to me. American consumers are used to the bear shaped bottles with purified honey that’s barely distinguishable from sugar syrup and could easily be adulterated but the raw honey I usually buy is so obviously honey from the taste and texture that I have a hard time believing any of it is adulterated. If honey producers were really that good at artificially replicating flavor profiles, they’d be far ahead of the rest of the food science industry.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#42

Post by trimethylpurine »

pbronez wrote: post #23
School-Cotton wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know this? Is there actual reporting on what percentage of honey in supermarkets is adulterated, rather than just anecdotal reports that at least some is?

From the article: 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.

Some part of the verbiage here is unscientific. We're in need of a percentage of suspicion that applies to a percentage of jars and whether that percentage of suspicion is based on the presence or absence of certain adulterants.

Otherwise these percentages give more ambiguity than insight about the products.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#43

Post by buran77 »

pbronez wrote: post #23
School-Cotton wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know this? Is there actual reporting on what percentage of honey in supermarkets is adulterated, rather than just anecdotal reports that at least some is?

From the article: 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.

Also:

> Regulators in the UK have not published detailed results of official tests, but rejected claims of significant fraud.

If I remember correctly this was already the situation in Germany already decades ago. At least half of the honey on the German market was (to use the term from the present article) adulterated as EU investigations at the time showed. The investigators was even hidden camera footage with importers admitting they knew this was the case. Then a lot of lobbying money moved around between importers, distributors, and local authorities, and the honey kept flowing.

The labs that did the testing were good for far more delicate work so it wasn't a matter of precision and accuracy, more a matter of Germans loving their honey. Stopping the flow of cheap, even if adulterated honey from China and at the time I think also Ukraine would be a big hit to the industry's wallet. I bet all those involved just told themselves "sweet is sweet" and went about their profit making business.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#44

Post by cgh »

c2h5oh wrote: post #31
Etheryte wrote: post #10

Here's a very straightforward guide to buying honey. If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. If you see honey online, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. If you find an old dude with a small stand and a bunch of (most likely unlabelled) jars who only accepts cash, that's where you get real honey.

Better yet befriend a beekeeper. You gain a friend and honey.

Yeah, one of my best friends is a beekeeper and we get our honey from him. This led to an uptick in honey consumption around here and perhaps not unrelatedly, I got my first ever cavity about six months ago.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#45

Post by RHSeeger »

Etheryte wrote: post #37
School-Cotton wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know this? Is there actual reporting on what percentage of honey in supermarkets is adulterated, rather than just anecdotal reports that at least some is?

There are many studies into this, but this Forbes article [0] is a good example: > 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 fin…

> Of 123 honey exporters to Europe, 70 are suspected of having adulterated their products

That sounds better than the rates I saw of good/bad extra virgin olive oil, and you can most certainly find good EVOO at a grocery store; you just need to know what brands to look for. Is there any reason to believe it isn't the same with honey? If not, then that's a pretty far cry from "If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup".

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#47

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

Rygian wrote: post #11
Michelangelo11 wrote: post #5

Feels like wherever you turn, you see a high-trust society disintegrating into a low-trust one.

To my untrained eye, this is a natural consequence of focusing on profit above all. So a natural consequence in cultures where such focus exists.

I'm increasingly convinced this switches cause and effect. Focusing on profit above all is a capitalist manifestation of an authoritarian zero-sum society; in state socialism it manifests as top-down anti-worker state focused on metrics and productivity. (In both cases a major problem is an absence of labor unions and formally independent oversight. People forget that Lenin killed workers who went on strike.)

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.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#48

Post by highcountess »

throwup238 wrote: post #41
skylurk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honey supply chains are opaque and global, plus the incentives to cheat are clearly there and it's hard to definitively prove a batch was not adulterated. I'd say it's fair to be 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...

> "Consumers don't tend to like crystallized honey," says Jill Clark, vice president for sales and marketing at Dutch Gold. "It's very funny. In Canada, there's a lot of creamed honey sold, and people are very accustomed to honey crystallizing. Same in Europe. But the U.S. consumer is very used to a liquid product, and as soon as they see those first granules of crystallization, we get the phone calls: 'Something's w…

Are you sure what you believe is unadulterated honey because you are familiar with the taste, is not just adulterated and you are just so accustomed to fake honey that you confuse the two?

I say that because basically all the honey I’ve ever bought in a store has always tasted flat and lacked flavor depth that has long made me wonder about its authority compared to known hive honey.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#49

Post by lttlrck »

Etheryte wrote: post #10

Here's a very straightforward guide to buying honey. If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. If you see honey online, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. If you find an old dude with a small stand and a bunch of (most likely unlabelled) jars who only accepts cash, that's where you get real honey.

Buy from a bee keeper if you care that much. The "cash only old dude with a stand" filter will fail.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#50

Post by RHSeeger »

Rygian wrote: post #11
Michelangelo11 wrote: post #5

Feels like wherever you turn, you see a high-trust society disintegrating into a low-trust one.

To my untrained eye, this is a natural consequence of focusing on profit above all. So a natural consequence in cultures where such focus exists.

My thought would be that it's as much the fact that society is growing. It used to be we'd buy our food from the producers of it. If it was bad, word would get around and the 10-50 people that were buying from them would stop; and they'd be out of business. Then society grew and we got local stores. And, while the same _idea_ was true, there was a lot more people and word didn't get around as much; so the impact was smaller. Then big stores, major chains, and you and your 100 friends that know something is bad... don't matter to them very much. Then online retailers and now nobody matters to them. If word they they're cheating people gets out, they change the name of their business and they're fine again.

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.

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