Is Chinese honey legally honey?

[peteinwilts]

as an fyi Allowie Mixed Blossom Honey was prosecuted due to not containing honey as described by the FDA ruling

and while we are there, Evergreen Life Manuka Honey was prosecuted for containing flavour enhancing additives that should not be used in food.

 

[Speybee]

And my garlic comes from the Isle of Wight.

Are you getting your bulbs to plant out yourself? Or buying the culinary product from there? Is it mail order or is there a Harrods in Wales?

 

[Speybee]

Ne

More likely to insist on it to encourage “made in Britain”.
Or is that just wishful thinking?

Never wishful thinking...try Aldi ( I don’t work for them I just shop there)

 

[Speybee]

Would that you are correct, sad thing is the uk government has steadily denuded our manufacturing/production bases for years through its policies, intentional or not, and now they blame anything and everyone else for their folly. The last 10 or so has seen mainly big multinational types succeed on the backs of smaller innovative ones. There isn't very much "British" left.

I think the main problem with Chinese honey is that a lot of it is not actually produced by bees at all. Their Alibaba website apparently openly lists rice syrup for addition to honey. Our local council (Richmond-upon-Thames) tested Tesco’s own brand honey and found it was fake. Unfortunately the test using NMR is expensive so other councils are unlikely to follow suit in a hurry. Conventional tests are apparently no good at detecting fake honey as the chemical composition of the syrup is very similar to that of the honey.

I also think a person’s sense of taste and smell is useful too.
This adulterated product would probably not taste or smell as complex and floral as the genuine article.

 

[Speybee]

I heard a news item a couple of days ago saying doctors are now being advised to prescribe honey for coughs and sore throats. Obviously antibiotics are ineffective against viral infections. I hope it's not any old honey they are advising as presumably cheap supermarket honey would prove to be worse than useless.

https://www.independentnurse.co.uk/news/doctors-told-to-prescribe-honey-over-antibiotics/182294/

Glycerine, lemon and honey cough mixture is one such product

 

[dancingbee]

There is a lot more honey fraud going on in the UK than is apparent. Many of the TS organisations have commercial contracts with the big companies eg Tesco, Rowse etc to provide analysis for them. This means that they would be unlikely to prosecute in the event of fraud because they would lose the contract - and lots of money. Honey from all the leading supermarkets were analysed using NMR, and all were found to have been tampered with including one sample that had caramel colouring added to it. Despite these test results being presented at Apimondia, and having been replicated and been found correct, nothing has happened because of these contracts.

 

[Angularity]

Are you getting your bulbs to plant out yourself? Or buying the culinary product from there? Is it mail order or is there a Harrods in Wales?

I'm not in Wales, but I get the bulbs from there then plant them out. So I suppose my garlic comes from Cambridgeshire. A bit like my honey (he said, doing a quick swerve back on topic).

 

[gmonag]

Given that we all agree that much (most?) of non-EU "honey" is nothing of the sort, then why is there not a concerted effort by us all, and our associations, to stop the import and sale of fake honey. I would have thought that now is the perfect time to address this, given that we finally break the chains with the EU in a few months.

Has it been tried before and failed? Is there some reason I can't think of?

I have no issue with honey-like syrup being sold, just don't call it honey. That is not too much to ask, is it? We can't sell fake Champagne but we can sell Sparkling White Wine. Call it Sweet-Spread or Foney or some other clever name.

Who should be leading this protest?

 

[Monbees]

Glycerine, lemon and honey cough mixture is one such product

I would doubt very much that an over the counter produçt with honey as the third listed ingredient would have much, if any healing effect. Also doubt whether the honey would ever have seen the inside of a bee hive.