1279 Honey

The alley is dark, dogs bark at the shadows in the distance and then you're approached by your contact....

Pssst!
Wanna buy some honey?
Well? What do you do? Call the police of buy a $5 baggy of the good stuff?

I think that for most of us this is not how a honey 'buy' normally goes and sounds somewhat far fetched.
Or is it?

I know what you're thinking - 'What has he been smoking?'
Well I'm sad to say that this is in fact not too far from how things are done in certain circles.

Consider the map below:

Now consider the honey you last purchased from a supermarket - where was it from?
Did the label say it was from one of the following:

Here's how it works:

We all know about China, we know that they will kill us all sooner or later and that they are contaminating whole regions beyond the point where they are able to support the local flora or fauna (there are valleys in China where Bees for example can not live because of the 'background' levels of pollution - pesticides in this case - kills them).

We also know that their production methods include the use of drugs that are banned in Europe, post mixing honey to thicken it up or adding chemicals at the processing plant to make it 'more like' honey - and there's more.....

So given that Chinese honey is not wanted what about Indian honey?
The Indians do produce honey but neither India or Singapor produce the tons of honey that are turning up at docks all over the world.

To make this work you need to ship honey from China to a holding company in say India.
The honey is then off loaded and sent to a packaging plant where it is put in jars or just different containers - You can now argue that the honey was 'manufactured' in this country and therefore label as such (so product of India for example).

The honey is now put back on a ship and sent to the USA (it could be anywhere but it's a pertinent example) - it arrives and is put on the shelves as is - product of India/Singapor/where ever.

Et voila - Chinese honey dressed up as something else.
In a recent investigation in the USA it was found that of just over 600 shipments of honey from India 471 were not actually Indian in origin.

This then also lead the authorities to check other suppliers and the same sort of story was found from Singapor and Russia - there were also cases of innocent vendors buying honey based on a sample and when the product turned up at the port it was not the same as the sample.

One of the ways that a seasoned vendor will know where honey is from is the taste - obviously the flora here in Switzerland is quite different to say Israel and so the honey will taste notably different (consider honey from sun flowers and then think honey from the orange tree flowers).

You might be wondering why I chose to write this article - it's not me being a miserable old man.
A couple of months ago I went to England and stayed in a very nice hotel. At breakfast I had my cup of tea and some toast, the waitress kindly brought me a series of preserves.
I went for the honey, it had a local vendors name and logo on it - when I tasted it I was rather surprised at the taste given where I was - upon closer inspection I found the phrase 'A Blend of EU and None-EU honey' - so I asked the waitress if they had anything local at which point she explained that the honey I had in my hand was from just down the road.

A few weeks later I went to a really expensive hotel in London and had EXACTLY the same experience (although obviously I didn't assume that the producer was in town).

Yesterday I saw a story in one of the Ohio papers about a busted honey counterfitting ring and so this made me think - how many of us are coming away from the shops thinking that we have brought something that is either made locally or at least made in a manner that wont cause us to have nightmares - only to find out (or be ignorant of the fact) that we have actually brought crap that you wouldn't want your family coming into contact with if they were wearing rubber gloves?

This isn't a crusade - but if it makes you think for a moment and have a closer look at the labels in your shopping trolley then it's not a bad thing.
That being said I still advocate buying locally from your local farmers where possible - the foods better for you, it's typically fresh and its carbon foot print does not involve a comparative analysis of fuel types and distance.