Beekeepers halt honey awards over ‘huge fraud’ in global supply chain
Beekeepers halt honey awards over ‘huge fraud’ in global supply chain
Warnings that genuine products are bulked out with cheaper sugar syrup prompt international congress to withdraw prizes
The World Beekeeping Awards will not award a prize for honey next year after warnings of widespread fraud in the global supply chain.
Apimondia, the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations, says it will showcase honey from around the world at its congress in Denmark, but for the first time make no awards for the product.
The decision came as beekeepers and importers face a mounting crisis over the scale of fraud, with warnings that genuine products are bulked out with cheaper sugar syrup. Some common tests to detect fraud can easily be defeated, and beekeepers say there has been a failure by food watchdogs and the industry to combat the fraudsters.
It amuses me that top experts in the field can't definitively say if a product is genuine pure honey. At that point, why are we stealing the bees' hard work?
There is a test that works, however the standardized test that was used up until now can't detect the fraudulent product (this was syrup cut with real honey I'm a very clever way)
That's why the fraud happened in such a massive scale.
I thought everyone knew this? When real honey costs 2-4x as much, what do people think supermarket honey is?
Especially because real honey has vastly different texture and flavours depending on location/flowers, where the sugar syrup is just that: a constant, yellow goop. Even if it were real honey, I couldn't enjoy it.