What becomes apparent is that the
ultra filtering process is unnecessary and only serves to allow substitution in
the first instance. It also allows
adulteration of honey with flavored corn syrup by manufacturers who need to
sustain volume.
I suspect an assay protocol able
to separate sugar types would sort all this out.
It has never occurred to me to
not trust the honey supply yet the door is obviously wide open and questionable
Chinese operators have already long been caught abusing the market here.
High quality natural honey is
clearly beneficial. Artificial honey can
only be a high sucrose blend without any other benefit at all. The obvious solution is to simply avoid mass
market sources as they are the ones that are going to buy cheap junk. There are always plenty of local suppliers
who will be happy to fill the gap for those who are wishing to be careful.
Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey
Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins
BY ANDREW
SCHNEIDER | NOV 07, 2011
More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn't exactly
what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food
Safety News.
The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of
products labeled "honey."
The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower
would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world's
food safety agencies.
The food safety divisions of the World Health Organization, the
European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen
there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe
sources.
In the U.S. ,
the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that's been
ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn't honey. However, the FDA
isn't checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.
Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes
watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters
to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of
the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have
illegally dumped tons of their honey - some containing illegal antibiotics - on
the U.S.
market for years.
Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after
its earlier
investigation found U.S.
groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe
as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total
lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin.
Food Safety News purchased more than 60 jars, jugs and plastic bears of
honey in 10 states and the District
of Columbia .
The contents were
analyzed for pollen by Vaughn Bryant, a professor at Texas A&M
University and one of the
nation's premier melissopalynologists, or investigators of pollen in
honey.
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.
And if you have to buy at major grocery chains, the analysis found that your odds are somewhat better of getting honey that wasn't ultra-filtered if you buy brands labeled as organic. Out of seven samples tested, five (71 percent) were heavy with pollen. All of the organic honey was produced in
The National Honey Board, a federal research and promotion organization
under USDA oversight, says the bulk of foreign honey (at least 60 percent or
more) is sold to the food industry for use in baked goods, beverages, sauces
and processed foods. Food Safety News did not examine these products for
this story.
Some U.S.
honey packers didn't want to talk about how they process their merchandise.
One who did was Bob Olney, of Honey Tree Inc., in Michigan , who sells its Winnie the Pooh
honey in Walmart stores. Bryant's analysis of the contents of the
container made in Winnie's image found that the pollen had been removed.
Olney says that his honey came from suppliers in Montana, North Dakota and Alberta .
"It was filtered in processing because North American shoppers want their
honey crystal clear," he said.
The packers of Silverbow Honey added: "The grocery stores want
processed honey as it lasts longer on the shelves."
However, most beekeepers say traditional filtering used by most will
catch bee parts, wax, debris from the hives and other visible contaminants but
will leave the pollen in place.
Ernie Groeb, the president and CEO of Groeb Farms Inc., which calls
itself "the world's largest packer of honey," says he makes no
specific requirement to the pollen content of the 85 million pounds of honey
his company buys.
Groeb sells retail under the Miller's brand and says he buys 100
percent pure honey, but does not "specify nor do we require that the
pollen be left in or be removed."
He says that there are many different filtering methods used by
beekeepers and honey packers.
"We buy basically what's considered raw honey. We trust good
suppliers. That's what we rely on," said Groeb, whose headquarters is in
Onstead, Mich.
Why Remove the Pollen?
Removal of all pollen from honey "makes no sense" and is
completely contrary to marketing the highest quality product possible, Mark
Jensen, president of the American Honey Producers Association, told Food Safety
News.
"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.
The Sioux Honey Association, who says it's America 's largest supplier,
declined repeated requests for comments on ultra-filtration, what Sue Bee does
with its foreign honey and whether it's ultra-filtered when they buy it. The
co-op markets retail under Sue Bee, Clover Maid, Aunt Sue, Natural Pure and
many store brands.
Eric Wenger, director of quality services for Golden Heritage Foods,
the nation's third largest packer, said his company takes every precaution not
to buy laundered Chinese honey.
"We are well aware of the tricks being used by some brokers to
sell honey that originated in China and laundering it in a second country by
filtering out the pollen and other adulterants," said Wenger, whose firm
markets 55 million pounds of honey annually under its Busy Bee brand, store
brands, club stores and food service.
"The brokers know that if there's an absence of all pollen in the
raw honey we won't buy it, we won't touch it, because without pollen we have no
way to verify its origin."
He said his company uses "extreme care" including pollen
analysis when purchasing foreign honey, especially from countries like India,
Vietnam and others that have or have had "business arrangements" with
Chinese honey producers.
Golden Heritage, Wenger said, then carefully removes all pollen from
the raw honey when it's processed to extend shelf life, but says, "as we
see it, that is not ultra-filtration.
"There is a significant difference between filtration, which is a
standard industry practice intended to create a shelf-stable honey, and
ultra-filtration, which is a deceptive, illegal, unethical practice."
Some of the foreign and state standards that are being instituted can
be read to mean different things, Wenger said "but the confusion can be
eliminated and we can all be held to the same appropriate standards for quality
if FDA finally establishes the standards we've all wanted for so long."
Groeb says he has urged FDA to take action as he also "totally
supports a standard of Identity for honey. It will help everyone have common
ground as to what pure honey truly is!"
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.
Food scientists and honey specialists say pollen is the only foolproof
fingerprint to a honey's source.
Federal investigators working on criminal indictments and a very few
conscientious packers were willing to pay stiff fees to have the pollen in
their honey analyzed for country of origin. That complex, multi-step analysis
is done by fewer than five commercial laboratories in the world.
But, Customs and Justice Department investigators told Food Safety News
that whenever U.S. food safety or criminal experts verify a method to identify
potentially illegal honey - such as analyzing the pollen - the laundering
operators find a way to thwart it, such as ultra-filtration.
The U.S.
imported 208 million pounds of honey over the past 18 months. Almost 60 percent
came from Asian countries - traditional laundering points for Chinese honey.
This included 45 million pounds from India alone.
And websites still openly offer brokers who will illegally transship
honey and scores of other tariff-protected goods from China to the U.S.
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.
You'll Never Know
In many cases, consumers would have an easier time deciphering state
secrets than pinning down where the honey they're buying in groceries actually
came from.
The majority of the honey that Bryant's analysis found to have no
pollen was packaged as store brands by outside companies but carried a label
unique to the food chain. For example, Giant Eagle has a ValuTime label on some
of its honey. In Target it's called Market Pantry, Naturally Preferred
and others. Walmart uses Great Value and Safeway just says Safeway.
Wegmans also uses its own name.
Who actually bottled these store brands is often a mystery.
A noteworthy exception is Golden Heritage of Hillsboro , Kan.
The company either puts its name or decipherable initials on the back of store
brands it fills.
"We're never bashful about discussing the products we put
out" said Wenger, the company's quality director. "We want people to
know who to contact if they have questions."
The big grocery chains were no help in identifying the sources of the
honey they package in their store brands.
For example, when Food Safety News was hunting the source of nine
samples that came back as ultra-filtered from QFC, Fred Myer and King Sooper,
the various customer service numbers all led to representatives of Kroger,
which owns them all. The replies were identical: "We can't release that
information. It is proprietary."
One of the customer service representatives said the contact address on
two of the honeys being questioned was in Sioux City, Iowa, which is where
Sioux Bee's corporate office is located.
Jessica Carlson, a public relations person for Target, waved the
proprietary banner and also refused to say whether it was Target management or
the honey suppliers that wanted the source of the honey kept from the public.
Similar non-answers came from representatives of Safeway, Walmart and
Giant Eagle.
The drugstores weren't any more open with the sources of their house
brands of honey. A Rite Aid representative said "if it's not marked made
in China , than it's made in
the United States ."
She didn't know who made it but said "I'll ask someone."
Rite Aid, Walgreen and CVS have yet to supply the information.
Only two smaller Pacific Northwest
grocery chains - Haggen and Metropolitan Market - both selling honey without
pollen, weren't bashful about the source of their honey. Haggen said right off
that its brand comes from Golden Heritage. Metropolitan Market said its honey -
Western Family - is packed by Bee Maid Honey, a co-op of beekeepers from the
Canadian provinces of Manitoba , Saskatchewan , Alberta
and British Columbia .
Pollen? Who Cares?
Why should consumers care if their honey has had its pollen removed?
"Raw honey is thought to have many medicinal properties,"
says Kathy Egan, dietitian at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester , Mass.
"Stomach ailments, anemia and allergies are just a few of the conditions
that may be improved by consumption of unprocessed honey."
But beyond pollen's reported enzymes, antioxidants and well documented
anti-allergenic benefits, a growing population of natural food advocates just
don't want their honey messed with.
There is enormous variety among honeys. They range in color from
glass-clear to a dark mahogany and in consistency from watery to chunky to a
crystallized solid. It's the plants and flowers where the bees forage for
nectar that will determine the significant difference in the taste, aroma and
color of what the bees produce. It is the processing that controls the texture.
Food historians say that in the 1950s the typical grocery might have
offered three or four different brands of honey. Today, a fair-sized store
will offer 40 to 50 different types, flavors and sources of honey out of the
estimated 300 different honeys made in the U.S. . And with the attractiveness
of natural food and the locavore movement, honey's popularity is burgeoning.
Unfortunately, with it comes the potential for fraud.
Concocting a sweet-tasting syrup out of cane, corn or beet sugar, rice
syrup or any of more than a dozen sweetening agents is a great deal easier,
quicker and far less expensive than dealing with the natural brew of bees.
However, even the most dedicated beekeeper can unknowingly put
incorrect information on a honey jar's label.
Bryant has examined nearly 2,000 samples of honey sent in by
beekeepers, honey importers, and ag officials checking commercial brands off
store shelves. Types include premium honey such as "buckwheat, tupelo,
sage, orange blossom, and sourwood" produced in Florida ,
North Carolina , California ,
New York and Virginia
and "fireweed" from Alaska .
"Almost all were incorrectly labeled based on their pollen and
nectar contents," he said.
Out of the 60 plus samples that Bryant tested for Food Safety News, the
absolute most flavorful said "blackberry" on the label. When Bryant
concluded his examination of the pollen in this sample he found clover and wildflowers
clearly outnumbering a smattering of grains of blackberry pollen.
For the most part we are not talking about intentional fraud here.
Contrary to their most fervent wishes, beekeepers can't control where their
bees actually forage any more than they can keep the tides from changing. They
offer their best guess on the predominant foliage within flying distance of the
hives.
"I think we need a truth in labeling law in the U.S. as they
have in other countries," Bryant added.
FDA Ignores Pleas
No one can say for sure why the FDA has ignored repeated pleas from
Congress, beekeepers and the honey industry to develop a U.S. standard
for identification for honey.
Nancy Gentry owns the small Cross Creek Honey Company in Interlachen,
Fla., and she isn't worried about the quality of the honey she sells.
"I harvest my own honey. We put the frames in an extractor, spin
it out, strain it, and it goes into a jar. It's honey the way bees
intended," Gentry said.
But the negative stories on the discovery of tainted and bogus honey
raised her fears for the public's perception of honey.
She spent months of studying what the rest of the world was doing to
protect consumers from tainted honey and questioning beekeepers and industry on
what was needed here. Gentry became the leading force in crafting language for Florida to develop the
nation's first standard for identification for honey.
In July 2009, Florida
adopted the standard and placed its Division of Food Safety in the Department
of Agriculture and Consumer Services in charge of enforcing it. It's
since been followed by California, Wisconsin and North Carolina and is
somewhere in the state legislative or regulatory maze in Georgia, Virginia,
Maryland, Ohio, New York, Texas, Kansas, Oregon, North Dakota, South Dakota,
West Virginia and others.
John Ambrose's battle for a national definition goes back 36 years. He
said the issue is of great importance to North
Carolina because it has more beekeepers than any
other state in the country.
He and others tried to convince FDA that a single national standard for
honey to help prevent adulterated honey from being sold was needed. The agency
promised him it would be on the books within two years.
"But that never happened," said Ambrose, a professor and
entomologist at North Carolina
State University
and apiculturist, or bee expert. North Carolina
followed Florida 's
lead and passed its own identification standards last year.
Ambrose, who was co-chair of the team that drafted the state beekeeper
association's honey standards says the language is very simple, "Our
standard says that nothing can be added or removed from the honey. So in other
words, if somebody removes the pollen, or adds moisture or corn syrup or table
sugar, that's adulteration," Ambrose told Food Safety News.
But still, he says he's asked all the time how to ensure that you're
buying quality honey. "The fact is, unless you're buying from a
beekeeper, you're at risk," was his uncomfortably blunt reply.
Eric Silva, counsel for the American Honey Producers Association said
the standard is a simple but essential tool in ensuring the quality and safety
of honey consumed by millions of Americans each year.
"Without it, the FDA and their trade enforcement counterparts are
severely limited in their ability to combat the flow of illicit and potentially
dangerous honey into this country," Silva told Food Safety News.
It's not just beekeepers, consumers and the industry that FDA officials
either ignore or slough off with comments that they're too busy.
New York Sen. Charles Schumer is one of more than 20 U.S. senators and
members of Congress of both parties who have asked the FDA repeatedly to create
a federal "pure honey" standard, similar to what the rest of the
world has established.
They get the same answer that Ambrose got in 1975: "Any day
now."
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