- Joined
- Nov 10, 2008
- Messages
- 759
- Reaction score
- 39
- Location
- Oxfordshire
- Hive Type
- Commercial
- Number of Hives
- More than 1, numbers seem to go up and down.
No excuse for selling adulterated honey because they should be checking what goes in their shelves.
They do, allegedly, check the veracity of their own label brands but I understand that the 'testing' is sometimes carried out by the suppliers who certify the origins and constituents of the honey they supply - there cannot be a lot of incentive to declare if the honey you are buying in from China, in bulk to sell on, does not meet the 'made by bees' UK honey regulations.Agreed, but from what this article says, it's harder than we might think to check if honey has been adulterated or not. Which is a bit depressing.
I hear tell of beekeepers feeding copious amounts of fresh sugar syrup and spinning it off in the mix, increases yields somewhat... the "honey" is somewhat sweet!Maybe it's not the supplier adding anything to the honey at all.
It could be the Bees collecting sugar syrup from somewhere.
Yes - from the open barrels of syrup left lying around the apiariesIt could be the Bees collecting sugar syrup from somewhere.
I was in Lidl the other day 85p for a 340g jar !!!!
I hope not... chlorinated chickens? no thanks!!So was I. Rather than the local market or farm shop. If we demand the cheapest, don't we deserve what we get. ?
A ban could easily happen come January if the government want to....They do, allegedly, check the veracity of their own label brands but I understand that the 'testing' is sometimes carried out by the suppliers who certify the origins and constituents of the honey they supply - there cannot be a lot of incentive to declare if the honey you are buying in from China, in bulk to sell on, does not meet the 'made by bees' UK honey regulations.
The tests are also quite difficult to carry out and I suspect not entirely reliable. We all know from the price that some of these honeys are, on shelf, in supermarkets, there is no way they can be 'real honey'. It's been a worldwide problem for years ... the stuff they used to cut the real honey with is freely available on Ali Baba. Honey from China is regularly 'laundered' through unscrupulous third party dealers in Europe and sold on as something it is not. My view ... ban importation of Chinese Honey and insist on a chain of provenance - but that's not going to happen is it ?
Whether Joe Public will worry ? I doubt it .... until they have tasted real honey will they ever know the difference ? My customers appreciate what they are buying from my bees and would never buy honey at £1.50 a jar with an unknown 'blend of EU and Non-EU' honey label ... but, there are lots of very poor people out there at present trying to feed kids and I have some sympathy that price is important to them - we should not live in an Ivory tower. By all means educate but own label honey customers are not our market ...
I think they are going to have more pressing issues in January ... although I do hope, in time, that something will be done to stop the sales of products purported to be honey that are adulterated with cheaper ingredients.A ban could easily happen come January if the government want to....
I read a statistic that stated that 1 in 3 jars labelled Honey on USA supermarket shelves, contained no Honey whatsoever!There was a National Honey Show lecture this year - Etienne Bruneau: The honey market in turmoil - which expained that the reason much of our honey is adulterated is because our testing regime is the worst in Europe so are seen as an easy target.
I don't think the lecture is available to view on YouTube yet.
I read an article years ago about Chinese honey. I don't think I was a beekeeper then. This precisely what they do. There are 'bee factories' where billions of bees are kept. They are fed sugar syrup that they turn into 'honey.' It is no different from any other factory farming involving other animals. Obviously the produce lacks just about every other ingredient of proper honey, made by bees, operating in a natural environment.Yes - from the open barrels of syrup left lying around the apiaries
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