Questionable imported honey making its way to U.S. store shelves

Though Americans consume hundreds of millions of pounds of honey every year, a recent investigative report determined that some of the honey found on store shelves can be tainted and even imported illegally into the United States.

The honey business is good. So much so that BeeKind, a small Sebastopol honey retailer, has set up a kiosk in the San Francisco Ferry Building complete with a honey tasting bar.

However, it's not always easy for consumers to know where they honey they're buying is from based on the labels found on containers.

America is so large that we gobble up 300 million pounds of honey a year. About twice what we produce. And with the U.S. bee colonies dying off at an alarming rate, the U. S. needs to import more and more every year.

Two things threaten California’s honey industry. One is the general health of  bee populations and number two: a threat from overseas which is called “honey laundering”.

According to University of California at Davis bee scientist Eric Mussen,  there is one way to tell where the honey is from by looking on the bottle.

"If there is honey in that jar that came from somewhere other than the United States, that country of origin is supposed to be on the label," said Mussen.

Costco has a three pack of honey in bear containers. It was packed in Kansas, the origin of the honey but where they honey was from was not printed on the label but barely visible on the plastic bottle.

Recently U.S. Customs Inspectors seized a shipment of honey at the Port of Savannah, Georgia. They believed it to be Chinese.

"Chinese honey was known to contain illegal animal antibiotics and recently heavy metals," said Andrew Schneider from Food Safety News.

And because the Chinese government heavily subsidizes it’s honey producers, it illegally can dump its product on the U. S. market at a fraction of the real cost to produce it.

A few years ago, Uncle Sam imposed heavy import tariffs on Chinese honey to level the playing field. According to commercial honey producer Gene Brandi, it dramtically changed how the product was imported to the U.S.

“So what happened was the amount of honey from China decreased sharply, but the amount of honey from other neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and India increased sharply,” explained Brandi.

Brandi said those countries pay no additional import tariffs on honey. The American Honey Producers Association says that of the sixty million pounds of honey imported from India in the first six months of this year, much of it actually came from China.

Some processors say to maintain the clarity of honey, which many Americans prefer, they remove the pollen that makes it easy to trace.

Santa Rosa beekeeper Randy Sue Collins says that is what makes local honey so much better.

"You know that you're getting honey from nectar from flowers and not from the sugar water or high fructose syrups that often get fed to commercial bees," explained Collins.

Food Safety News, sponsored by a Seattle law firm that handles food contamination cases, tested honey from ten states including California. They said that most of the honey bought at major retailers is untraceable so you don’t know where it comes from.

"Every sample we got from a farmer’s market or a natural produce store was filled with pollen, untouched," said Schneider of Food Safety News. "Find your local beekeeper, go to your farmer’s market, or go to some of your natural food stores."

You may pay more for limited local products, but you will be sure where it came from. To find a local store near you go to www.honeylocator.com