Today’s Report – January 31st

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Honey Laundering. There was an interesting article on the radio program Life On Earth this week highlighting this eight-part investigative report by Andrew Schneider. Basically, Schneider discovered that imported honey — about 2/3 of the honey consumed in the US — is quite likely to be “trans-shipped” to avoid tariffs. A huge percentage of the imported honey comes from China, but because of the tariff issue it’s labeled “Australia” or “Korea”. And honey from China has traditionally had the same sorts of quality concerns we’ve seen with other food products from there. Since there is no legal definition of honey it’s pretty much impossible for the USDA or the FDA to inspect honey to determine if it’s even real. Apparently there are all sorts of additives in honey, such as illegal antibiotics and inexpensive corn syrup. And don’t expect that “Organic” honey is any better. Since bees fly all over to get their pollen, the honey is totally dependent on what sort of plants they visit. If the plants aren’t organic, neither is the honey.

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