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Thanks China and The FDA!

busydude

busydude

Diamond Member
Now I have to think twice before enjoying one of my favorite ingredient.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/

Very long article, but worth the read.

Bryant, who is director of the Palynology Research Laboratory, found that among the containers of honey provided by Food Safety News:


• 76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.


• 100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.


• 77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.


• 100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald's and KFC had the pollen removed.

• Bryant found that every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and "natural" stores like PCC and Trader Joe's had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen.
Click to expand...
What's Wrong With Chinese Honey?


Chinese honey has long had a poor reputation in the U.S., where - in 2001 - the Federal Trade Commission imposed stiff import tariffs or taxes to stop the Chinese from flooding the marketplace with dirt-cheap, heavily subsidized honey, which was forcing American beekeepers out of business.

To avoid the dumping tariffs, the Chinese quickly began transshipping honey to several other countries, then laundering it by switching the color of the shipping drums, the documents and labels to indicate a bogus but tariff-free country of origin for the honey.


Most U.S. honey buyers knew about the Chinese actions because of the sudden availability of lower cost honey, and little was said.

The FDA -- either because of lack of interest or resources -- devoted little effort to inspecting imported honey. Nevertheless, the agency had occasionally either been told of, or had stumbled upon, Chinese honey contaminated with chloramphenicol and other illegal animal antibiotics which are dangerous, even fatal, to a very small percentage of the population.

Mostly, the adulteration went undetected. Sometimes FDA caught it.


In one instance 10 years ago, contaminated Chinese honey was shipped to Canada and then on to a warehouse in Houston where it was sold to jelly maker J.M. Smuckers and the national baker Sara Lee.


By the time the FDA said it realized the Chinese honey was tainted, Smuckers had sold 12,040 cases of individually packed honey to Ritz-Carlton Hotels and Sara Lee said it may have been used in a half-million loaves of bread that were on store shelves.


Eventually, some honey packers became worried about what they were pumping into the plastic bears and jars they were selling. They began using in-house or private labs to test for honey diluted with inexpensive high fructose corn syrup or 13 other illegal sweeteners or for the presence of illegal antibiotics. But even the most sophisticated of these tests would not pinpoint the geographic source of the honey.
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FDA's Lack of Action


The Food and Drug Administration weighed into the filtration issue years ago.

"The FDA has sent a letter to industry stating that the FDA does not consider 'ultra-filtered' honey to be honey," agency press officer Tamara Ward told Food Safety News.

She went on to explain: "We have not halted any importation of honey because we have yet to detect 'ultra-filtered' honey. If we do detect 'ultra-filtered' honey we will refuse entry."


Many in the honey industry and some in FDA's import office say they doubt that FDA checks more than 5 percent of all foreign honey shipments.


For three months, the FDA promised Food Safety News to make its "honey expert" available to explain what that statement meant. It never happened. Further, the federal food safety authorities refused offers to examine Bryant's analysis and explain what it plans to do about the selling of honey it says is adulterated because of the removal of pollen, a key ingredient.

Major food safety standard-setting organizations such as the United Nations' Codex Alimentarius, the European Union and the European Food Safety Authority say the intentional removal of pollen is dangerous because it eliminates the ability of consumers and law enforcement to determine the actual origin of the honey.


"The removal of pollen will make the determination of botanical and geographic origin of honey impossible and circumvents the ability to trace and identify the actual source of the honey," says the European Union Directive on Honey.

The Codex commission's Standard for Honey, which sets principles for the international trade in food, has ruled that "No pollen or constituent particular to honey may be removed except where this is unavoidable in the removal of foreign matter. . ." It even suggested what size mesh to use (not smaller than 0.2mm or 200 micron) to filter out unwanted debris -- bits of wax and wood from the frames, and parts of bees -- but retain 95 percent of all the pollen.


Food Safety News asked Bryant to analyze foreign honey packaged in Italy, Hungary, Greece, Tasmania and New Zealand to try to get a feeling for whether the Codex standards for pollen were being heeded overseas. The samples from every country but Greece were loaded with various types and amounts of pollen. Honey from Greece had none.
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And also.. PSA:

honey-without-pollen-food-safety-news1-thumb-350x838-11588.jpg
 
Its a sad reality, its not only honey, its everything, you should be specially careful if you are buying organic stuff. Are being screwed over by china and they bribe out politicians into being quiet, hopeless situation...
 
China is who America's rich and powerful wish to do business with. It's up to the consumer to boycott products that are being offered by these corporations and greedy business owners.
 
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my local KFC doesn't even have honey anymore, but instead they have "Honey Sauce" where it's <&#37;10 honey.
 
Guess its a good thing that I buy local honey

I assume, then, that pollen in honey is a good thing?
 
rdubbz said:
you should buy local honey anyways if you want any benefit.
Click to expand...

Aside from any perceived benefits, you're supporting small agriculture. People whine about corporations shipping jobs overseas, and they want "someone" to do something about it. They don't have to go any farther than the bathroom mirror to see which someone has the most clout to get something done. Everyone wants somebody else to take the financial hit in doing the right thing, and they don't associate their own actions with the decline of America.
 
Ns1 said:
Guess its a good thing that I buy local honey

I assume, then, that pollen in honey is a good thing?
Click to expand...

I don't think the inclusion of pollen is a good or bad thing health wise, it is simply stating that the removal of pollen shows the possibility that the honey came from a source that is not optimal. It is then untraceable so it could have come from China.
 
V00DOO said:
So is it safe to buy honey "Made In USA"?
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"I don't know of any U.S. producer that would want to do that. Elimination of all pollen can only be achieved by ultra-filtering and this filtration process does nothing but cost money and diminish the quality of the honey," Jensen said.

"In my judgment, it is pretty safe to assume that any ultra-filtered honey on store shelves is Chinese honey and it's even safer to assume that it entered the country uninspected and in violation of federal law," he added.


Richard Adee, whose 80,000 hives in multiple states produce 7 million pounds of honey each year, told Food Safety News that "honey has been valued by millions for centuries for its flavor and nutritional value and that is precisely what is completely removed by the ultra-filtration process."


"There is only one reason to ultra-filter honey and there's nothing good about it," he says.


"It's no secret to anyone in the business that the only reason all the pollen is filtered out is to hide where it initially came from and the fact is that in almost all cases, that is China," Adee added.
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The reason why pollen is important in honey is, because most of the honey produced in China is tainted with heavy metals and antibiotics.

There was an outbreak of some sort.. and Chinese bee farmers used(and continue to use) banned pesticides/antibiotics which are harmful for human consumption.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/introduction/38/
 
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msw1382 said:
I don't think the inclusion of pollen is a good or bad thing health wise, it is simply stating that the removal of pollen shows the possibility that the honey came from a source that is not optimal. It is then untraceable so it could have come from China.
Click to expand...

makes sense.
 
Saw the same article. We normally buy our honey at Wegman's, but will probably check out local places now.
 
Also, at the beginning of the 21st century.. China dumped its honey into the west. Needless to say, it was extremely cheap and subsidized by the Chinese government.. which ultimately led to massive job losses for American bee keepers.

IIRC, EU banned import of honey which contains no pollen. FDA also does not recognize honey without pollen as honey.. but is doing very little to stop the chinese imports.
 
SunnyD said:
This is ATOT baby! We're millionaires AND we milk our own bees here!!!

(Sexy bees that don't have pointy elbows!)
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Bee keeping is something I've been interested in for awhile. I'd like to give it a shot some time before I die.

Oh, and my bees will be the sexiest ;^)
 
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