Checkmite
Skepticifimisticalationist
Furr'ners busted!
TLDR;
It's called "honey laundering", and here's how it works.
It all starts in China. China, with access to an incredible supply of cheap labor, is the number one producer and exporter of "honey" in the world. Because they can produce so much so cheaply, they dump their honey on other countries, undercutting domestic suppliers and drastically lowering the price of honey.
Oh, well...tough deal, right? Not exactly. See, it's not just that the honey is so cheap. See, in America, us beekeepers harvest our honey, and the amount of honey we harvest in a given year is...well, vastly dependent on a whole slew of variables. One year - like this year! - we might have a bumper crop; another year - like last year, funnily enough - the harvest will be terrible.
In China, there's no such thing as a "bad crop". When it becomes evident that the bees will not be gathering a goodly amount of nectar, the honey-farmers there supplement the bees' stores with sugar syrup and HFCS. The bees take these sweeteners and cure them into something that looks a lot like honey, and combine them with the rest of the stores. The bees don't care. But as consumers, we care, because what's made from HFCS and sugar syrup is not real honey, it's just thicker sugar syrup or HFCS. When these products are mixed with regular honey, the honey is called adulterated.
And that's not all either. Beekeeping isn't the most labor-intensive job in the world, but hive management does take some effort. Every individual colony may have different needs or problems. Rather than take the time to inspect each hive for diseases and pests, the honey-farmers take a "proactive" approach and feed all of their colonies loads of medicines and antibiotics as a pre-emptive measure. Now, don't get me wrong - in the US, most beekeepers use medicines and antibiotics too when they're needed; but with this exception: by law, we cannot have any honey supers (hive sections filled with comb specifically used to store honey) that are destined to be extracted for human consumption on the colony when medicines, antibiotics, or other chemicals are applied, nor for a certain time period following the last application. In China, lost time is lost honey, so they have no such restrictions. The result: some of those chemicals and medications end up in the honey.
For these reasons, the US really does not want to import honey from China. I mean really; there is a 300-to-500% tariff on any honey China imports to the United States. We do this from time to time whenever we don't want a specific product imported for whatever reason - the tariff makes it so that China would actually lose money by shipping honey to America. Shut out of the market. What to do?
Well, what China does is they ship all their honey to "honey launderers" in a couple of countries - most notably Argentina, but there are others. The launderers essentially remove the "from China" shipping labels and resell the honey to US honey packers as Argentinian honey (or honey from whichever country the flipper is in). Honey from Argentina isn't subject to the same tariff, so it sells at a profit. China wins; you (the US honey consumer) and I (the US honey producer) lose.
Often it works. On some (too rare, in my opinion) occasions, as above, the plot is foiled when the USDA decides to test a shipment of honey, and finds traces of the antibiotics. Microscopic analysis of the pollen grains in the honey identifies China as the region of origin, and people get arrested. Honey packers are supposed to test the shipments for themselves - and many of them do, refusing to accept the shipment if they find antibiotics; but the packers almost never turn in the suppliers to the USDA, preferring to take a "we didn't accept it, therefore it's not our honey and not our responsibility" approach. The supplier just takes it back and re-sells it to another packer that doesn't test it, and it ends up on your supermarket shelf anyway, just under a different label.
In any case, it's good to see developments like this, as they show the process is working. The USDA is tremendously understaffed and can't test as much as we'd rather they did; but the DoJ is lately stepping up and taking an active role in investigating and prosecuting honey launderers.
TLDR;
It's called "honey laundering", and here's how it works.
It all starts in China. China, with access to an incredible supply of cheap labor, is the number one producer and exporter of "honey" in the world. Because they can produce so much so cheaply, they dump their honey on other countries, undercutting domestic suppliers and drastically lowering the price of honey.
Oh, well...tough deal, right? Not exactly. See, it's not just that the honey is so cheap. See, in America, us beekeepers harvest our honey, and the amount of honey we harvest in a given year is...well, vastly dependent on a whole slew of variables. One year - like this year! - we might have a bumper crop; another year - like last year, funnily enough - the harvest will be terrible.
In China, there's no such thing as a "bad crop". When it becomes evident that the bees will not be gathering a goodly amount of nectar, the honey-farmers there supplement the bees' stores with sugar syrup and HFCS. The bees take these sweeteners and cure them into something that looks a lot like honey, and combine them with the rest of the stores. The bees don't care. But as consumers, we care, because what's made from HFCS and sugar syrup is not real honey, it's just thicker sugar syrup or HFCS. When these products are mixed with regular honey, the honey is called adulterated.
And that's not all either. Beekeeping isn't the most labor-intensive job in the world, but hive management does take some effort. Every individual colony may have different needs or problems. Rather than take the time to inspect each hive for diseases and pests, the honey-farmers take a "proactive" approach and feed all of their colonies loads of medicines and antibiotics as a pre-emptive measure. Now, don't get me wrong - in the US, most beekeepers use medicines and antibiotics too when they're needed; but with this exception: by law, we cannot have any honey supers (hive sections filled with comb specifically used to store honey) that are destined to be extracted for human consumption on the colony when medicines, antibiotics, or other chemicals are applied, nor for a certain time period following the last application. In China, lost time is lost honey, so they have no such restrictions. The result: some of those chemicals and medications end up in the honey.
For these reasons, the US really does not want to import honey from China. I mean really; there is a 300-to-500% tariff on any honey China imports to the United States. We do this from time to time whenever we don't want a specific product imported for whatever reason - the tariff makes it so that China would actually lose money by shipping honey to America. Shut out of the market. What to do?
Well, what China does is they ship all their honey to "honey launderers" in a couple of countries - most notably Argentina, but there are others. The launderers essentially remove the "from China" shipping labels and resell the honey to US honey packers as Argentinian honey (or honey from whichever country the flipper is in). Honey from Argentina isn't subject to the same tariff, so it sells at a profit. China wins; you (the US honey consumer) and I (the US honey producer) lose.
Often it works. On some (too rare, in my opinion) occasions, as above, the plot is foiled when the USDA decides to test a shipment of honey, and finds traces of the antibiotics. Microscopic analysis of the pollen grains in the honey identifies China as the region of origin, and people get arrested. Honey packers are supposed to test the shipments for themselves - and many of them do, refusing to accept the shipment if they find antibiotics; but the packers almost never turn in the suppliers to the USDA, preferring to take a "we didn't accept it, therefore it's not our honey and not our responsibility" approach. The supplier just takes it back and re-sells it to another packer that doesn't test it, and it ends up on your supermarket shelf anyway, just under a different label.
In any case, it's good to see developments like this, as they show the process is working. The USDA is tremendously understaffed and can't test as much as we'd rather they did; but the DoJ is lately stepping up and taking an active role in investigating and prosecuting honey launderers.
