Not surprisingly with food adulteration cases, the Chinese are involved in the mix.
Mark Lallanilla, Live Science via Business Insider, 20 March 2012 (hat tip: NC)
Food-safety experts have found that much of the honey sold in the United States isn't actually honey, but a concoction of corn or rice syrup, malt sweeteners or "jiggery" (cheap, unrefined sugar), plus a small amount of genuine honey, according to Wired UK.
Worse, some honey — much of which is imported from Asia — has been found to contain toxins like lead and other heavy metals, as well as drugs like chloramphenicol, an antibiotic, according to a Department of Justice news release.
This international "honey-laundering" scandal has now resulted in a Justice Department indictment of two U.S. companies and the charging of five people with selling mislabeled honey that also contained chloramphenicol.Honey Solutions of Baytown, Texas, and Groeb Farms of Onsted, Mich., have agreed to pay millions of dollars in fines and implement corporate compliance measures following a lengthy Justice Department investigation.
They are lucky it was the Feds going after
them. In North Carolina, a food producer
who adulterated his “Glutton Free” received an 8-year sentence.
4 comments:
Lucky for me I'm not a fan of honey but that is still quite awful.
It gets worse; much honey sold is pollen free:
http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/stories/honey-laundering-fradulent-and-tainted-honey-and-how-to-avoid-it
76% to 100% of honey sampled in grocery stores, drugstores, big box stores, and restaurants was pollen-free. The ones with antibiotics probably are actually honey. What they do is they raise them inside on sugar water.
None of the samples from farmers or health food stores were pollen free.
Most of the pollen is cooked away when they pasteurize it. They also heat it to mix it with the stuff and make it flow better.
Natural raw honey is really very labor intensive to harvest and bottle so I doubt they would make enough profit otherwise and as JDW pointed out they like to feed em stuff like sugar water exclusively which does not produce actual honey either.
Francis: My wife and son love it. They take muffins, and such, and then put both butter and honey on it. Sweeet!
John: Thanks I am going to have to look at that.
Pioneer: What honey I buy (versus wife) is direct from local types. I assume that by them taking out the middleman's cut it makes it worth it worth their time without being too pricey.
It is amazing how many different types of taste their are depending on what nectar the bees were sipping on.
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