Bee careful: your honey might be full of corn syrup - Entrepreneur Generations

When you think of counterfeit items, you might think of Rolexes or money. But these days you might just find something fake in your grocery cart: imported honey is increasingly likely to be diluted with cheap fillers.

Part of the problem is that Americans' appetite for honey has almost doubled since the 1990s, with prices following, but American bees produce 35 percent less now than 20 years ago. "This has given honey-sellers an incentive to dilute it with cheaper things like corn, rice and beet syrup," The Economist reports. "According to the US Pharmacopeia’s Food Fraud Database, honey is now the third-favourite food target for adulteration, behind milk and olive oil."

Because domestic production can't keep up with demand, Americans import a lot of honey. And though there are tests to make sure honey hasn't been tampered with, the most common one is more than 25 years old and most honey counterfeiters know how to get around it, The Economist says.

Another problem: Food and Drug Administration guidelines require honey sellers to list additional ingredients, but those rules aren't legally enforceable. And the FDA's legal definition of honey is so loose as to possibly allow adulterants like corn syrup.

Domestic production is unlikely to increase as long as beekeepers make more money renting out their bees to pollinate crops than from producing honey. Crop pollination "involves up to 90 percent of the commercial bee population in America, leaving few bees to pollinate everything else that requires their attention," The Economist writes. Such pollination services have been made more necessary because of dense planting, especially of almond trees, that make it less likely that natural pollination would occur. And bees are having a harder time surviving in nature because of climate change, diseases, and possibly the use of neonicotinoid pesticides.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2NUYVHr Bee careful: your honey might be full of corn syrup - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet