[HN Gopher] Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global su...
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Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain
Author : a_w
Score : 127 points
Date : 2024-12-01 03:49 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| DennisP wrote:
| This is why I buy my honey from a local beekeeper I trust.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Agreed, I always felt honey was one of the easiest and best
| products to buy locally.
| Kapura wrote:
| wow, it's almost like cutting taxes and disassembling the
| regulatory state creates bad outcomes anywhere it's profitable.
| hackernewds wrote:
| you mean interfering with the free market
| mmooss wrote:
| Regulation is necessary to a free market. Otherwise powerful
| forces in the market will make it non-free for everyone else
| or make it non-free for honest business by forcing them to do
| illicit things to be competitive.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Of course. Free markets in the sense of being completely
| unregulated, are logically incompatible with regulated ones.
|
| As a consumer, I want a regulated market. I want product
| safety and a lack of fraud.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| If you want to put your local beekeeper out of the business of
| selling honey, then by all means, complain about an inadequate
| regulatory state. Because that's who the bureaucrats will go
| after.
| cma wrote:
| What Buraeucrats are actually administering for anyone
| wondering:
|
| Insurance Programs
|
| Market-based risk management tools to strengthen the economic
| stability of agricultural producers and rural communities.
| Apiculture
|
| Rainfall Index
|
| The Apiculture Pilot Insurance Program (RI-API) provides a
| safety net for beekeepers' primary income sources - honey,
| pollen collection, wax, and breeding stock. Beekeepers can
| purchase RI-API through a crop insurance agent that works for
| an Approved Insurance Provider.
|
| Whole-Farm Revenue Protection
|
| Whole-Farm Revenue Protection provides a risk management
| safety net for all commodities, including honey, on the farm
| under one insurance policy. This insurance plan is tailored
| for any farm with up to $8.5 million in insured revenue.
|
| Micro Farm Program
|
| A new insurance option for small, diverse farms that sell
| locally. The policy offers revenue guarantees for beekeepers
| producing honey, bees, queens, and other products of the hive
| when facing unavoidable adverse events, such as drought and
| other weather-related events. It also simplifies
| recordkeeping and covers post-production costs and value-
| added products, such as bottled honey, to make crop insurance
| more useful to smaller beekeepers and agricultural producers.
|
| Disaster Assistance Programs
|
| Offers disaster assistance programs in instances where
| beekeepers have been hit hard by natural disaster events.
|
| Emergency Livestock Assistance Program
|
| The Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-
| Raised Fish program provides financial assistance to eligible
| honey bee producers for eligible adverse weather events and
| losses. Drought is not an eligible cause of loss for honey
| bee colony losses.
|
| Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP)
|
| Eligible beekeepers can quality for NAP financial assistance
| when losses incurred by natural disasters are not covered by
| other disaster assistance programs.
|
| Loan Programs
|
| USDA offers a variety of direct and guaranteed loan programs
| for eligible beekeepers. See guide for more information.
|
| Farm Loan Program (FLP)
|
| Beekeepers whose primary business is honey production,
| qualify as a family farm, and demonstrate security and
| eligibility can be considered for FLP guaranteed loans, which
| can assist in building overwintering colony storage
| facilities.
|
| Farm Storage Facility Loan Program
|
| This program provides low-interest financing so producers can
| build or upgrade facilities to store commodities, including
| honey.
|
| Microloan Programs
|
| Operating and ownership loans to better serve the unique
| financial operating needs of new, niche, and small to mid-
| sized family operations.
|
| Emergency Loan Program
|
| Emergency loans to help beekeepers recover from production
| and physical losses due to drought, flooding, other natural
| disasters, or quarantine.
|
| Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Loans Direct and guaranteed
| loan programs, ownership loans, operating loans, and
| microloan programs for beginning farmers and ranchers,
| including beekeepers.
|
| Nonresource Marketing Assistance Loans - Honey Program
|
| Marketing assistance loans provide interim financing at
| harvest time to help beekeepers meet cash flow needs without
| having to sell their commodities when market prices are
| typically at harvest-time lows. Grants
|
| Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP)
|
| Multiple grants and programs are available through LAMP to
| support development, coordination, and expansion of direct
| producer-to-consumer marketing; local and regional food
| markets and enterprises; and value-added agricultural
| products.
|
| Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program
|
| This program is open to small businesses that support the bee
| keeping industry in technology development and transfer.
|
| Sustainable Agriculture, Research, and Education (SARE)
| Program
|
| Producers and professionals in the beekeeping industry may
| apply for competitive funding available through this program.
|
| Diagnostic Testing Bee Disease Diagnosis Service
|
| A free USDA beekeeper service to identify diseases, pests,
| and foulbrood resistance.
|
| https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-
| prog...
| russdill wrote:
| Regulation can ensure that businesses doing things right can
| actually complete. How the hell is my local beekeeper
| supposed to compete against people selling jars of corn
| syrup?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Regulation can ensure that businesses doing things right
| can actually complete_
|
| Regulation adds fixed costs. That _always_ increases
| barriers to entry.
|
| The aim is to make that barrier worth it. (You can also
| directly mitigate it, but this is less common.) But in the
| cases of food and medicine, regulation has absolutely
| forced consolidation. The pitch from Big Pharma and Big Ag
| when buying out biotech and food start-ups (or small
| producers) is they've mastered the global compliance
| network, and can thus scale and thus outcompete small
| producers.
|
| What it does seem we need is liability by large
| distributors around selling fraudulent products. That still
| adds a barrier to entry, since those distributors will have
| a testing programme. But at least you get multiple programs
| that have an incentive to reduce costs.
| mmooss wrote:
| It increases one barrier which can reduce others - the
| illicit market power and practices of unregulated
| competitors.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Word of mouth. Not the best option, but it's balanced
| against the cost of regulation. The cost of complying with
| regulation (not changes in the product, but proving you
| comply) can destroy any hope of profit from a smaller
| business; but the cost doesn't increase at the same rate as
| business size, so the big businesses have no issue.
|
| Regulations are important, but they have a distinct cost.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| What are you talking about? None of those things have happened
| in the EU where this fraud is being discussed, in fact it's the
| opposite over there
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| Feels like wherever you turn, you see a high-trust society
| disintegrating into a low-trust one.
| Rygian wrote:
| 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.
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| Yeah, and maybe also a focus on grabbing all you can _now_ ,
| without regard for the future.
| tenpies wrote:
| And yet, this has happened since we've been around.
|
| 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-
| nasir
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I'd argue there is much more fraud with product coming from
| china than what is locally produced. Fraud always existed
| but now it's more prevalent than before, simply because
| some countries don't really try to enforce simple rules.
|
| For instance, Chinese mother refuse to buy powder milk in
| china since there has been so much fraud. Manufacturer put
| melamine (a plastic chemical) in powder milk for years to
| make them appear with more protein than reality, inducing
| kidney damage to newborn.
|
| That kind of thing doesn't happen in civilized society,
| this require a complete lack of morality and wide
| corruption.
| diggan wrote:
| Maybe Ea-nasir was also too focused on profits, thinking
| more about shareholder value than the customer.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| Just beware that plenty of people are pretending to be
| "Democratic capitalists" and saying they work for you and
| even do things that look very good - but the end result is
| not good for you. Even in the case someone is honestly
| trying to work for you uintended consequences of their
| actions can be worse for you.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| 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.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The phrase "a sucker born every minute" is not near as old as
| "caveat emptor" or "cui bono", but the constancy of viewpoint
| should have told you something
| thwarted wrote:
| Rose colored glasses looking at the past. Nostalgia for
| something that never was.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Exactly. Food purity and safety has probably never been
| higher. 100 years ago there was widespread adulteration and
| contamination of food, in addition to pure snake oil sold as
| beneficial medication.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| i don't buy the low trust society model. i see improved
| awareness
| mmooss wrote:
| Do you have evidence of that? Things do change, and sometimes
| for the worse.
|
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| The exact thing in question might be slightly different,
| but nothing is new.
|
| In the case of rents, the evil landlord raising rents and
| kicking people out is a trope you see in 1910s fiction.
| (probably before that, but I haven't personally read much
| fiction older than about 1910)
| dannyobrien wrote:
| or better examinations revealing the ongoing challenges of
| societal co-operation to a wider audience
| Aurornis wrote:
| Actually I think the opposite is true in many cases. Food
| quality and safety standards are higher than ever.
|
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Actually I think the opposite is true in many cases. Food
| quality and safety standards are higher than ever._
|
| 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.
| akira2501 wrote:
| We used to sell _literal_ "snake oil" as a curative.
|
| 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.
| cortesoft wrote:
| How would you distinguish that from a society that is slowly
| discovering long lasting frauds that have been going on for
| decades?
| slackerIII wrote:
| Why call it fraud when you can call it honey laundering?
| thih9 wrote:
| The association with money laundering doesn't sound good and
| this is already a bad buzz.
| rhdunn wrote:
| It's a sticky situation!
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Or embuzzling.
| ncr100 wrote:
| ouch! (and thank you!)
| m104 wrote:
| Only solution: sting operation
| layer8 wrote:
| Call it "rarefied honey", that makes it sound premium.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Honey is one of the most counterfeited food products in the
| world. Olive oil is another.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Simplest approach is to make two categories blended and pure.
| With contestants only being allowed to enter one. This would
| incentivize otherwise would be cheaters yo enter the category
| they can legit compete in, reducing the amount pf testing
| required to only those in the pure category, which would keep
| costs down.
| cbzbc wrote:
| Not really; there'd still be a premium for the "pure" category
| and so incentive for people to continue to cheat.
| Etheryte wrote:
| 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.
| umanwizard wrote:
| 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?
| pbronez wrote:
| 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.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| 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.
| buran77 wrote:
| 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.
| secondcoming wrote:
| It's extremely common for honey sold in the UK to be
| labelled as a 'blend of EU and non-EU honey', or similar.
| There's no doubt in my mind that what this really means is
| that they've no real idea where the honey comes from.
|
| On the rare occasion I do buy honey it's usually Scottish
| Heather Honey, which is as delicious as it is expensive.
| Marazan wrote:
| Yeah as soon as I see 'blend of EU and non-EU honey' then
| I'm noping out of there as it just means disguised sugar
| syrup.
|
| Actual location authenticated honey costs actual real
| money.
| skylurk wrote:
| 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/t
| hesalt/2011/11/25/142659547/re...
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> "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.
| highcountess wrote:
| 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.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I've had raw honey straight from both domesticated and
| wild hives as it was collected so unless the bees
| themselves are adulterating it, I think I've got an
| accurate baseline for how honey is supposed to taste.
|
| Go out and buy a good manuka or wild Himalayan honey and
| you'll quickly learn how to spot the real stuff. The
| honey I buy isn't meant to look like filtered golden
| sugar syrup so adulterating it is practically impossible.
| That said I buy it from ethnic grocery stores so unless
| you're getting the good stuff at Trader Joes YMMV (I like
| their manuka)
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| I remember an episode of Dirty Jobs where there was an
| old candy plant or something that bees had gotten into,
| and they made blue honey from the syrup that was left
| over in the plant.
|
| Rare, but possibly the bees were doing a swindle.
| throwup238 wrote:
| From my limited understanding almost all beekeepers give
| their bees sugar syrup to help them overwinter anyway so
| nothing stops them from supplementing their diets in the
| spring. It's obviously not ideal since a lot of the other
| aromatics from pollen will be missing but it's still a
| step up from mixing the end product with sugar syrup.
|
| Blue honey sounds cool though.
| afandian wrote:
| Thicker 'fondant' is for winter. Thinner syrup is for
| spring before the nectar flow gets going. Typically over
| winter the colony reduces in size, and the hive is
| reduced down to a single "brood box".
|
| Supers (extra boxes) are placed on the hive when the
| colony is producing enough honey to harvest.
|
| In theory the supplemental sugar shouldn't get into the
| supers.
| yumraj wrote:
| We buy from Costco and most/all of it crystallizes after
| some time.
|
| Not sure if that makes it good honey, but there's that.
| 7thpower wrote:
| The first thing that popped into my head after reading
| this was the large container of Kirkland honey I have.
|
| I thought: "Costco wouldn't lie to me? Would they?"
|
| Now I must go and find out.
| hollerith wrote:
| Just because they're not lying doesn't mean they've done
| the work of _finding out_ whether the honey is pure.
| acomjean wrote:
| You can heat it in a microwave to reverse the
| crystallization.
|
| Do not do this ifs the honey is in a squeezable bear
| container. The honey will boil, make a hole in the bear
| and spray honey all over the inside of your microwave
| (the turntable helps this). This will make a huge mess
| and will make opening the microwave more challenging.
| yumraj wrote:
| I think the general recommendation is to put the bottle
| in warm/hot water. I don't believe microwaving is a good
| idea, unless done at low power for longer.
| avidiax wrote:
| Sous-vide at 110F. It will take hours, but it won't
| affect the flavor.
| Etheryte wrote:
| 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
| 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...
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > 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".
| WhiteDawn wrote:
| And similar to olive oil. Once you taste the real deal,
| it's very easy to identify the fake/watered down stuff by
| taste alone.
| mft_ wrote:
| > similar stings
|
| :)
| sholladay wrote:
| Agreed that fresh honey and store honey are very different.
| You would think that, given how different they are, it
| would be easy to detect the fake honey. But apparent lyrics
| not.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| And he is definitely globally wrong anyway.
|
| 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.
| vinnymac wrote:
| I think as a guide for buying honey his advice is valuable,
| although a bit dramatic, and it won't apply to every
| country or region.
|
| As someone who is a beekeeper and owns a farm, you can be
| much more certain what you're getting is honey where I am
| from when it's being purchased from the back of a van from
| some random person with some glass jars, than you can at
| any supermarket. Hi it's me I am the random person with the
| glass jars :)
| pfortuny wrote:
| Are you talking about a specific country or anywhere (in the
| West, I assume)?
| phatfish wrote:
| What I had heard was that anything that isn't "single source"
| likely has sugar syrup added. this includes all major brands.
| I wouldn't even trust the expensive "organic" versions of big
| brands. Apparently exported Chinese "honey" is the main
| offender which gets mixed with other sources.
|
| 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.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Sainburys has Scottish Heather Honey. According to the
| label it's 100% Scottish honey.
| c2h5oh wrote:
| Better yet befriend a beekeeper. You gain a friend and honey.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Cut out the middleman. Become friend with the bees. You gain
| a hive mind as friend, and honey! :D
| ponector wrote:
| Bit to get honey would mean to rob your hive friend.
| Snacklive wrote:
| Na dude, they are chill. They produce more under your
| friendship so you can keep a little. If they think the
| relationship is going toxic they just leave. It's awesome
| spookie wrote:
| Yeah, it's basically this. Most wouldn't survive winter.
| cgh wrote:
| 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.
| bena wrote:
| Nope, he just bought from the store, repackaged, then resold
| with a markup as it is cheaper to do so
| lttlrck wrote:
| Buy from a bee keeper if you care that much. The "cash only old
| dude with a stand" filter will fail.
| yumraj wrote:
| Now old dudes will buy supermarket honey and unlabeled jars.
|
| Unverifiable provenance in both cases..
| araneae wrote:
| If you /really/ want to be sure, buy comb honey. Impossible
| to fake.
| bagels wrote:
| Can't fake honeycomb be made and placed in to jars of fake
| honey?
| yumraj wrote:
| I've seen it but never dared to buy. What do you do with
| the honey comb, eat it? Does it taste waxy?
| Aurornis wrote:
| This isn't true at all in the United States at least.
|
| 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.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| The place I buy honey is run by an older woman in Vermont who
| owns a lovely apiary. I've visited and seen the process, she's
| fantastic, her product is delicious, and it's as real as it
| gets. They're 4th gen family owned, so they really know what
| they're doing and it's all about the bees, the honey and their
| reputation.
|
| 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.
| Mtinie wrote:
| My mom discovered Champlain Valley about 10 years ago, so now
| every time she visits (we're in VA, she's from CA), she sends
| an order with a two pound jar ahead so she has a honey she
| likes in our pantry. I don't complain at all, because it
| means we have excellent honey to consume once she leaves :)
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Your mother sounds great; it's funny too because I was also
| introduced to this by my mother! She's an avid tea drinker,
| and loves honey in her tea. Meanwhile I have Greek yogurt
| most mornings, and with addition of really good honey it
| becomes unbeatable.
|
| I guess the point my mother would claim is, "Listen to your
| mother, she knows best." Heh
| elorant wrote:
| I regularly buy honey from the supermarket from a long
| established Greek brand and it's as good as any honey I get
| from local markets, if not better.
| jart wrote:
| But all the honey labels say the only ingredient is honey.
| We've always been able to assume that with things like jams, or
| any other food, when manufacturers adulterate it with things
| like corn syrup, or even mild poisons, they proudly say so on
| the label. To not do so is fraud. How can people just claim
| that an entire industry is committing fraud??? Even this
| article doesn't mention anything about proof, just suspicions.
| Why can't they prove it? To make these kind of claims without
| proof is arguably worse than fraud. This would all be
| outrageous if it's true, since it becomes impossible to make
| any rational choices as consumers if the food system has gone
| fraudulent.
| _3u10 wrote:
| That's because honey is sugar syrup with a liberal sprinkling
| of marketing. The sugar syrup they are blending it with
| doesn't have the right marketing and is therefore not honey.
| jart wrote:
| No, it's not. Honey is defined by the USDA as being flower
| nectar that's been processed by bees[1]. Artificial honey
| can not be called honey[2]. If they're mixing it with high
| fructose corn syrup, then there should be a way to
| scientifically determine that.
|
| [1] https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Extr
| acted...
|
| [2] https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Extr
| acted...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Oh, the USDA publishes a rule! Surely everyone will
| follow that and the problem is solved.
|
| Unfortunately we get the behavior that we let people get
| away with. Regulators are asleep, courts let companies
| weasel their way around everything, and reality doesn't
| care about published rules and standards.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Regulations like these are onerous. Have you ever watched
| a bee filling out a Dept of Ag or FDA form? Dept of Govt
| Efficiency will fix it.
| colechristensen wrote:
| A 90s percent of honey is fructose, glucose, and water. A
| very high 90s percent of corn syrup is fructose, glucose,
| and water. Getting the ratios the same is trivial. There
| is nothing magical about fructose or glucose from
| different sources, they're exactly the same simple
| molecule.
|
| If you had very clean corn syrup, you could undetectably
| dilute honey and it would be quite the same. Lab tests
| being what they are these days, someone could probably
| make a part per billion analysis that would be very hard
| to evade, but the difference is emotional not practical.
|
| People have wrong ideas that honey is so much healthier
| than corn syrup when it is indeed very similar. Not that
| i support selling corn syrup as honey, but it wouldn't
| make any actual difference other than diluted flavor.
| jfengel wrote:
| The remaining 10 percent is very significant to flavor.
| You can definitely detect it with your tongue and nose.
|
| But as you say it is utterly irrelevant to nutrition or
| health. Even the antibacterial elements are real but
| negligible.
| maltyr wrote:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10346535/
|
| Numerous studies have concluded that honey does have a
| better effect on health than the same amount of simple
| syrup, at least.
|
| > It has been demonstrated that honey consumption can
| influence plasma lipid, glucose, and insulin levels
| through different biochemical mechanisms. The decrease in
| blood glucose may be due to the fact that honey has a
| stimulatory effect on insulin secretion and improves
| insulin sensitivity
| araneae wrote:
| I'm sorry you're just hearing this only right now, but
| unfortunately it's been happening for a while, and we've also
| known it for a while.
|
| 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.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Note this also happens with olive oil
|
| https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-
| press/newsroom/news/11-o...
|
| https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/business/europe/top-italian-
| po...
| Etheryte wrote:
| If you find this hard to believe, I recommend reading this
| Forbes article [0] which gives some pretty stark numbers.
| I've included a few select quotes below:
|
| > 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...
| pradn wrote:
| It makes total sense for European farmers to cry foul if
| cheaper imports get to masquerade as the real thing. This
| has been a big sticking point for the EU-Mercosur deal that
| recently concluded.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| All of the honey I buy at grocery stores crystalizes almost
| immediately... sugar syrup won't do that. I usually buy
| something that appears to be directly from a local farm with a
| name and address I recognize, and is in a regular mason jar
| with no fancy branding.
| deadbabe wrote:
| So I've never had real honey? Why doesn't someone just sell the
| stuff the small dude sells in a store?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| They do, parent is full of shit. Too much Instagram probably.
| bluGill wrote:
| They do sell it in stores, but there is no clear way you can
| know if you are getting the real stuff or fake - the labels
| look the same.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don 't, that's sugar
| syrup._
|
| 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.
| ljf wrote:
| Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42286030
| thg wrote:
| That's a link to _this_ discussion.
| abduhl wrote:
| Previous discussion of this discussion here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42351886
| ljf wrote:
| Gah - didn't spot that - this was originally posted 7 days
| ago, but seems to have been refreshed by dang - if you search
| 'honey' you'll see it was originally a thread 7 days ago.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I think the FDA should build towards mass food analysis. To sell
| something en masse you should have to put down a deposit, and the
| FDA should do an annual analysis of your food (via mass
| spectometry) from samples from the food store. They should mix
| dozens of samples from different states to get good coverage.
|
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _To sell something en masse you should have to put down a
| deposit, and the FDA should do an annual analysis of your food
| (via mass spectometry) from samples from the food store_
|
| Why don't we see more private enforcement? Class action
| lawsuits against fraudulent producers and distributors?
| move-on-by wrote:
| According to the article, the switch is occurring somewhere in
| the supply chain. So in your proposal, what part of the supply
| chain would bee on the hook for this deposit and profit
| reaping?
| foolfoolz wrote:
| we already have this in the FDA. it's just isolated to nutrient
| labels for most foods. the deposit is your business. failing a
| random annual FDA inspection is already extremely financially
| impactful
|
| 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.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > failing a random annual FDA inspection
|
| 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.
| zug_zug wrote:
| If we had what I described then we wouldn't have fake honey
| on shelves.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > For small local brands I'd exempt them until the economics
| became viable.
|
| 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.
| fsckboy wrote:
| the reason that adulterated honey is difficult to detect is that
| honey is just sugar syrup, and if you add more sugar syrup you'll
| get more sugar syrup than you started with.
|
| 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)
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _honey is just sugar syrup_
|
| 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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Antibiotic
|
| [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37107465/
| fsckboy wrote:
| when people are sloppy with language, they're probably sloppy
| with the science too.
|
| > _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.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| This is false. I'd be willing to wager substantial amounts of
| money on my ability to differentiate good acacia honey from
| sugar syrup.
| tvshtr wrote:
| What about acacia flavoured sugar syrup?
| johnea wrote:
| I kept bees for about 15 years. Personally, I see 0 reasosn to
| have any kind of "award" anyway.
|
| 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.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| When you cheat, you are no longer playing the game. And if
| everyone wants to cheat then it doesn't make sense to play at
| all.
| domofutu wrote:
| Blockchain could track honey from hive to jar, busting fraud with
| transparent supply chains & smart contracts.
| bluGill wrote:
| Why do you need a blockchain? A regular database can do that as
| well, and they use a lot less energy.
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