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Laser Intended For Mars Used To Detect "Honey Laundering"
A laser tool funded by the European Space Agency to measure carbon on Mars is now being used to help detect fake honey. By burning a few milligrams of honey the laser isotope ratio-meter can help determine its composition and origin. From the article: "According to a Food Safety News investigation, more than a third of honey consumed in the U.S. has been smuggled from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. To make matters worse, some honey brokers create counterfeit honey using a small amount of real honey, bulked up with sugar, malt sweeteners, corn or rice syrup, jaggery (a type of unrefined sugar) and other additives—known as honey laundering. This honey is often mislabeled and sold on as legitimate, unadulterated honey in places such as Europe and the U.S."
Most places in the US have a small local honey industry. Support it.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
You should try to buy from your local Farmer's Market if there's one nearby, whenever possible. You will be supporting your local economy and you can be reasonably sure a local merchant isn't pumping poison into the product or the groundwater (or else someone will have noticed). Especially when it's their water too.
I stocked up on some excellent honey and combs (these are delicious!) past Summer from our local market and they hold one at least twice a week near the town square. It's a good way to meet people in your area the old fasioned way too as opposed to FB, Twitter et al.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Ok, fake honey is bad. But even legitimate Chinese honey is crap. Honey is honey, right? Bees fly around, collect nectar, then spit out honey. (Yeah, yeah, the types of flowers affects the taste. I'm getting to that.) But a lot of Chinese honey doesn't involve flowers at all -- the bees drink sugar water. For all I know, that happens in the US, too. As mentioned above, go to a farmer's market and buy some local honey.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
They guy with all the bees is just the slave-driving middleman.
If you really want to buy from the actual producers, buy from the bees themselves. :)
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Once again, space industry technology is applicable to everyday life right here on earth. Pay attention, you stupid assholes in government!
Fake honey? Really? I wasn't even aware there was a fake honey underworld. I love honey and now I have to worry about whether some fuckwit has filled it with something else? Thanks alot you wankers.
But seriously, don't buy clear honey. Honey can be traced by the pollen, which has been removed in clear honey.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This was about adulterating honey with other sweet materials or honey that is contaminated with antibiotics and heavy metals.
If a wanker is adulterating your honey, well, I think I'd rather die of heavy metal poisoning than think about what he's adulterating it with.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Here is the original self-promoting story from Food Safety News:
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/08/honey-laundering
However, from searching Google News (e.g. "china counterfeit honey"), the results are merely people's blogs that link to the same Food Safety News article. I'm sure FSN is providing a helpful service of raising awareness, but they are not an impartial group who we can expect to conduct a reliable investigation. Where are the confirming sources?
Their article references the FDA, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Agriculture -- but I can't find anything on those sites to support the article's opening claim that "A third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China."
Can anybody provide a citation?
One of Australias' "Big 2" SuperMarket chains (ie, Coles) places Chinese-sourced "Honey & Syrup" in the middle of the rectangle of shelf-space otherwise occupied by honeys.
As "Honey" is listed first, in the product's name, I - for one - was once fooled into thinking that the product would -surely- have at least 50% honey in each plastic bottle of "Honey & Syrup," so I tracked down the Australian distributor & asked for details about the product.
(I should have generalised from what we - long ago - discovered about so-called 95 gram cans of "designer tunas" ...which turned out to contain from about 40% tuna up to slightly over 70%, depending on each can's "designer flavor.")
(The Australian importer's phone number was answered by an auto-parts company(!). Checking the phone number, it was then listed, in the phone catalog, as a car parts company.)
Assuming that the company was perhaps a rural-based operation, happy to convert some extra storage space into profits, I focused on the product's make-up, since the label did not specify the prevalence of either of the two named ingredients.
Verbally, the person at the cart parts company, who answered as importer & distributor of this product, told me that the product was 60% -syrup- & only 40% honey. As the label did not show these percentages, I couldn't help replying: "Today, maybe, but I'd almost expect the Chinese supplier to further reduce the percentage of honey it may mix in, in future, ie, to cut its cost.