Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #114: Honey: One of the Most Adulterated Foods in Our Food Supply

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Episode #114: Honey: One of the Most Adulterated Foods in Our Food Supply · Beyond Labels Premium

0:00
SPEAKER_01: I don't think many consumers are aware that honey is ripe with adulteration.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: Honey is one of the most adulterated foods in our food supply.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: And some experts estimate that up to 70% of all honey sold in the United States is adulterated or fake in some way.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Right?
0:21
SPEAKER_01: So, like I said, most of the honey that we are consuming is not made in America.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: According to the OSDA, in 2020, imports accounted for 70% of the total honey that was available.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: That was up from 54% in 2010.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: And since 2010, the leading suppliers that have given us our honey are Vietnam, Argentina, India, Brazil, and the Ukraine.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another Beyond Labels Podcast.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: Glad to have you.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm your farmer, Joel Salatin, co-hosting with my favorite partner, Dr.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to delve into a topic that I don't think we've ever uh talked about before, but the consumption of honey in the U.S.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: is increasing.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh actually, apparently a few people are getting the message about sugar and uh and going to a more natural sweetener, which is honey, which of course, you know, who doesn't love honey?
1:22
SPEAKER_00: But the but the problem is uh the commercialization of honey has has created some um you know some bad players.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: And so uh Cena's been busy on her uh search here to bring us up to speed on uh what we know about uh uh this commercialized honey and the adulteration of honey and the compromise of honey's uh shall we say naturalness, um uh honey's glory, maybe we could say, uh, that adulteration of of that honey distinctiveness that we've all you know grown to love.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: So Cena, um introduce us and and let's see what we got.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Joel.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: So yes, as you said, I've been busy as a bee researching this.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't read this.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: So um I have a lot to share today, and don't worry, we're gonna get into like some solutions as well.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: So the adulteration of honey is rampant, okay?
2:25
SPEAKER_01: And this is a problem because real raw honey is well known for being full of bioactive compounds like prebiotics and probiotics.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: It contains antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: It can change the microbiota within your gastrointestinal tract, you know, can help with all kinds of illnesses and um boost the immune system.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: It's even used as first aid to help heal wounds.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: So the application of honey has been well known for thousands of years, right?
3:01
SPEAKER_01: Humans have been consuming it for at least 8,000 years that we know of on record.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: And right now, as consumers are becoming more aware of the numerous health benefits of honey, like you said, consumption is increasing.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: In 2022, we consumed 562 million pounds of honey.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: Demand is so high in the United States that we have to import most of our honey.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, in the last 10 years alone, imports of honey have surged by 73%, and domestic honey production has remained relatively stable, meaning most of the honey is in fact imported.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to get into why that's a problem.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: But I don't think many consumers are aware that honey is ripe with adulteration.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: Honey is one of the most adulterated foods in our food supply.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: And some experts estimate that up to 70% of all honey sold in the United States is adulterated or fake in some way.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: Right?
4:06
SPEAKER_01: So, like I said, most of the honey that we are consuming is not made in America.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, according to the OSDA, in 2020, imports accounted for 70% of the total honey that was available.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: That was up from 54% in 2010.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: And since 2010, the leading suppliers that have given us our honey are Vietnam, Argentina, India, Brazil, and the Ukraine.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay, these top five suppliers represented about 88% of all our imports in 2020.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, and we'll talk about uh we'll we're gonna talk a little bit about how some of these are probably coming from China in just a minute.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: All right.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: So this is actually a global issue.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: It's not just an issue of adulterated honey in in the United States.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: The EU actually did an investigation of imported honey, and they found that about 46% of the 320 samples they tested were actually adulterated.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: So almost half of the samples.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: Now there are different types.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh, go ahead and so Cena, before before we before we jump into what the adulterants are, um what uh I'm I have my own ideas.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm not we we do have about 20 hives of honey here on on our farm.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: And so we we get our own honey.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I have my ideas on why we have such a shortfall, but what what have you found?
5:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, can't the you can't we produce our own honey?
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Why why do we why do we have to import it?
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Why aren't we producing more?
5:46
SPEAKER_01: So one of the big reasons that I have found in my research is uh the marketplace.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: So when we have this adulterated fake honey coming into our country, it drives down the price.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: And so what that means is that the the honest beekeepers in America can't actually get the same price point for their honey because the fake adulterated honey is driving down the price in our market.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: And because as consumers, most of us are not aware that these are adulterants, we are choosing to buy the cheaper honey.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: And so they're basically some of them are being driven out of business, right?
6:34
SPEAKER_01: They they can't sell the honey at that at that price, they're having to take second jobs or leave the market in its entirety.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's which which is really bad for the consumers because that means more of the fake adulterated honey is left on the market for us to buy.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: I just um I just uh last week actually at the Indiana homesteading conference talked with a a commercial beekeeper uh who I mean he's commercial.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: He you know, he moves honey, he moves hives around with tractor trailer trucks.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're all familiar with these, you know, uh uh beekeepers like this.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: And he just told me he just lost uh he just lost a hundred hives in a California um uh almond almond grove uh because the neighbor uh sprayed without and and and killed killed a hundred hives of of bees.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: Um I know back uh uh years ago we had a a beekeeper before we started keeping bees here ourselves.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: We had a commercial beekeeper that kept a yard of hives on us.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: He had about um in totally had about 43 4300 hives.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of hives.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: And um and he had about 40 here on our farm.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And every year um ours were consistently producing way more honey than any of his other yards because our bees never got poisoned.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: And so there's so so you know that that is a that is a cost factor here in the U.S.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh with our monocropping and our poisons and all that.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: Bees are like a canary, you know, to the environment.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: And they can't they can't um they can't take very much.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: And and and then the other thing is that we're uh so much of our production is monocrop that we don't have the diversity.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: So then that means diversity of vegetation in any one area, which means then that we don't have a steady flow of blossoms.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the uh one of the coolest things we we just uh several years ago we participated with a a Smithsonian um called a working landscape study.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh and we were one of like I think 29 or 30 sites in Virginia.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And um I think we were the only one that they found all eight known varieties of bumblebees known to exist in Virginia.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: And they were all sorry about it, you know, because we had all these bumblebees.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: And uh now I realized those aren't honeybees, all right, but they're you know, they're they're kissing cousins.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Um and and um and and the only thing we could figure out, and they could figure out was that because of our grazing, we have this mosaic in the pasture, so there's always something in in bloom because there's stuff that's just been grazed, ready to graze, post-grazing.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: And so you have this quilt, you have this quilt pattern, which means there's always something, you know, that that that has a blossom on it.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: And when you have a monoculture, uh you have this flush of blossom, and then you have nothing.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why these folks have to, you know, in look, in in in the perfect world, nobody would be moving hives around from place to place because there would always be enough blossoms in one place just because of vegetative diversity, you know, to keep them going.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: So um so, you know, I I I think we have a a multi-headed uh uh medusa here uh that's that that's conspiring against our domestic production.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: We are perhaps the most monoculture, monoculture driven uh agriculture in the world.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: That hurts.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: We probably use the most poisons of any place in the world.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: That hurts.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: And and then um, you know, we have the we have the the um those stresses then create opportunities for you know verona mites and and all sorts of you know different things to attack the hives.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: So and and we probably have the highest labor cost in the in the world.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: So you you combine all those things, and it's a it's a it's a quadruple whammy, um and and leaves an opp opportunity for other outfits.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: So um, so what are the most common adulterants and what are you finding?
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yes, and I'll piggyback on that, and this is one type of adulterant, is that how you were saying that you know we have a we spray a lot, and because there's not as much diversity, you know, in sources of nectar around the bees sometimes travel further.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: And so the organic label on honey, some people have come out, some experts in this field, and they're talking about how you can't even trust that label because they don't know where the bees are going, right?
11:27
SPEAKER_01: You can't, you're not like creating your movable cowl fences to keep the bees in, right?
11:34
SPEAKER_01: So the bees are going where they need to go to you know to get to get the nectar.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: And that in our country, pesticides are spray, they're so ubiquitous that they're possibly coming in contact with them or the residues.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: So even on our farm, even on our farm, the bees don't stop at the boundary fences.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: So if the neighbor's over there with his four-wheeler, you know, spraying his thistles or whatever, you know, those bees are gonna uh uh traverse that.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, so even ours, um, no doubt is not as perfect as it could be.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we would consider that to be one type of adulterant uh in an organic, you know, type of honey situation.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, typical adulterants are treating it with heat, right?
12:25
SPEAKER_01: And that denatures enzymes and other beneficial structures like the probiotics in the honey.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: So you so anytime it's treated with heat, we're considering that an adulterant.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, sometimes it's harvested too early as the plant nectar and doctored up and falsely sold as the end product honey.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there's additives and colorings that can be used to adulterate the honey.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, sometimes the bees are fed different types of syrups to produce the honey rather than their natural foraging, you know, and getting the nectar.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: They just straight feed them the syrups.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, that's going to severely impact the nutritional quality of that supposed honey.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: The honey itself can be diluted with uh modified additives like sugars or syrups.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: And many of us have become aware that honey can be diluted with corn syrup, for example, like high fructose corn syrup.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the the sugar syrups made from corn are actually now being phased out and they're being replaced with sugar syrups made from like rice, wheat, or sugar beet, right?
13:39
SPEAKER_01: And the reason why they're shifting that is because uh, you know, the high fructose corn syrup, it used to be the most commonly um adulterant to thin out the honey because you know you save money on that.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: But the isotope test is now easily spotting this adulteration.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: So the savvy counterfeiters, they switch to these other types of sugars.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, so so as soon as they know that someone is onto them, they're just going to keep switching, which adulterant, right?
14:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, this is also why, kind of as a health side note, when I was healing from the various ailments, diseases that I had, um, I did not consume honey.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: Like during that entire healing process, I did not consume honey because I knew that there was a high likelihood that it was contaminated with some kind of glutins, you know, either from the corn syrup or, you know, the rice or the wheat.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, also, here as an added adulterant that most people don't think about, it's not just that the honey is cut with these sugars.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: It's that are these sugars from GMO sources, right?
14:46
SPEAKER_01: The corn can be from genetically modified corn that's been sprayed with glyphothate, sugar beets.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: These have also been genetically modified to resist glyphothate.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, so it is possible that those are other adulterants that are getting into the honey.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: The honey itself can also be labeled as local, but sourced internationally.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: The EU, during their investigation, they found um, quote, complicity between exporters and importers.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: They were forging the traceability information.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so they're forging the documents.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: So what's labeled as local in the grocery store may actually be sourced from an international source.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Along those lines, filtering honey has become very popular.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: This we consider an adulterance.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay, when you filter the honey, you actually remove the pollen.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: And when you remove the pollen, that makes it really difficult to identify the country of origin, right?
15:49
SPEAKER_01: So pollen is like a unique fingerprint in the honey.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: And you can you can test the pollen to find out, okay, what types of plants, for instance, um, did this come did this honey come from?
16:02
SPEAKER_01: And then you know what country those plants are are found in and whatnot.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, so with the pollen remove, not only are you moving removing some of the nutrit uh nutritive benefits, but you are helping to disguise any kind of adulterated honey or honey that's been transshipped.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this is where we're going to get into involvement with China.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: So there are smugglers who are trans shipping honey.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: So that means, for instance, the honey might originate from a country like China.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: And then instead of shipping it directly to the United States, they will ship it to some intermediary country, like you know, in Asia or somewhere there, and then it gets relabeled as coming from that Asian country.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: And so we allow it in the US and the country of origin is associated with that intermediary country.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: Now, China partly does this.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: But what you're saying is so what you're saying is that that honey that that supposedly comes from Vietnam may actually be coming from China through Vietnam.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like, you know, right now, um 80%, 80% of organic grain in the US is imported.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: And 50% of that is all coming from the stand countries, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, um, and it and that's going all through the port at Istanbul, Turkey.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: So this this really begs the question of trust, doesn't it?
17:39
SPEAKER_00: It really begs the question of trust.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: It absolutely does.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: And so what's part of what's happened is there were so much adulterated honey coming from China that we slapped tariffs on them, right?
17:53
SPEAKER_01: So it costs them more money to ship honey from China to the US.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: So that's why they're smuggling them um through these other countries.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: And according to a report by Food Safety News, they were saying that a third or more of all the honey consumed in the US is probably smuggled in from China.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: Um in 2011, the European Union they actually banned all shipments of honey from India because they thought that it was actually coming from China.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: They've they found presence of lead and illegal antibiotics in that honey, and there wasn't proper paperwork proving that it didn't come from China.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: All right.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: The food safety news has gone on to say that there are still, quote, millions of pounds of trans-shipped Chinese honey coming in the US, and it's coming now from places like India and Vietnam.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: And again, at the start of this podcast, I mentioned India and Vietnam are two of the countries where we import most of our honey from, right?
18:59
SPEAKER_01: So we're finding these antibiotics, we're finding heavy metals in in this trans shipped honey.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: And it could be, it could be still the most um imported honey that the consumers in America are eating.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: And you know what I found interesting was just this year, Donnie took my kids to Georgia Tech.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: And you know, Donnie graduated from Georgia Tech, and so kind of one of those nostalgic moments.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: And so he took them there because they had this like science engineering day.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: And they had an entire booth dedicated to adulterated honey, right, at this kids' science fair.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: They showed him like NMR, you know, nuclear magnetic resonance testing.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: They had actually bought honey from a local grocery store, like multiple different samples, and they ran it through the um NMR machine, and they had the test results you can see, like it's like seeing a graph, and there's these peaks, and you can figure out okay, um, this peaks with this type of sugar, or like if there's if there's no high fructose corn syrup, it should not have this peak.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: The majority of all the honey that they had tested was adulterated.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: There was only one that wasn't adulterated, and it was a honey that that professor got from his neighbor who raised his own bees, right?
20:28
SPEAKER_01: That was the only sample that was not adulterated.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: But that's how prevalent this is, is that now it's even at these kids' fairs where they're trying to teach the kids about adulterated honey and our food supply, right?
20:40
SPEAKER_01: And as a as a side note, and then I want to get into what the government's doing about it, okay?
20:47
SPEAKER_01: So the adulteration of honey was actually one of the reasons why in the US we ended up with the Federal Food and Drug Administration, right?
20:57
SPEAKER_01: So honey in our country has been adulterated since at least 1881.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: There were reports back then of counterfeit honey.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: It was made using glucose and just enough real honey to give it that flavor.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: And occasionally they would even throw in B body parts just to make it look authentic, right?
21:17
SPEAKER_01: But now it's been like what 100, 140 years or something later, and honey is still one of the most adulterated foods in our entire US food supply.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: So, Joel, what does that tell us about the government protecting our food?
21:39
SPEAKER_00: I I would say that it would indicate indicate to me that it is ineffective.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: Um is that is that is that uh is that a fair assessment of the efficacy?
21:52
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that is a fair assessment.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, when I was teaching my kids this, you know, I I've I whatever I'm sharing on the podcast, I actually share with my Kids first and get their you know kid perspective on it.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: And when I was sharing all this with my kids, they were like, we should defund the FDA.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, I'm gonna be around.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: Like yeah.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: So clearly something is not working, right?
22:18
SPEAKER_01: It's still adulterated over a hundred years later.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: So what is going on here?
22:22
SPEAKER_01: So let's dive into the USDA and the FDA, um, what the regulations are, and if there's any hope for us in this situation.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's start with the USDA.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: The USDA created actually uh a voluntary grading system.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: And some of us are probably familiar with this because you can see it on the honey label.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: It's like grade A, grade B, or grade C of honey.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: That's that comes from the USDA.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: And again, it's a voluntary grading system.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Companies do not have to actually participate and grade their honey.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: The grades are based on factors like the flavor, the aroma, the clarity, and the absence of defects.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay, these are not the same as a federal standard of identity.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: And I'll get into that in a moment when I talk about the FDA.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: But just remember the USDA grading system is not a standard of identity.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: Now, in terms of this grading system, the Agricultural Marketing Service, which is part of the USDA, they came out with a rule in the Federal Register in 2009.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: And this is what they said: quote, honey does not require official inspection in order to carry official USDA grade marks.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: And there are no existing programs that require the official inspection and certification of honey.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so what does that mean?
23:56
SPEAKER_01: That means you don't have to get inspected, you don't have to get certified, you can just carry the grades of the honey.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: And the enforcement of the grading system is based on complaints from consumers.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: So there's really no enforcement, there's really no regulation.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: Producers can pretty much just slap the grade on the bottle, you know?
24:18
SPEAKER_01: Like so, so this is this is not a good safety measure for from the consumer perspective, right?
24:26
SPEAKER_01: This is very hands-off.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: So now let's talk about the FDA.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: What are they doing?
24:32
SPEAKER_01: Congress has actually said that the FDA is the federal agency that is responsible for regulating honey, assuring its safety, and assuring the labeling accuracy.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's let's talk about what the FDA has done to fulfill those requirements placed upon it by Congress of regulating honey and making sure it's safe and labeled accurately.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: So in 2006, there was a petition to get the FDA to develop a national standard of identity for honey.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: Okay, the standard of identity is very important for a food.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: It establishes the common name and the set of requirements for that food to be called that food.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: So the requirements define, for instance, the composition of the food, mandatory and optional ingredients, the amount of each ingredient, um, specific methods that might need to be used to produce that food.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: And if the standards aren't met, that's when the food is considered misbranded or adulterated and in violation of U.S.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: food and safety laws.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: So you it is a critical step to get a standard of identity for a food.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: You're laughing, Joel.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to hear.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: So so what I'm laughing about is uh while this all sounds really, really good, um, this is what's caught a lot of uh raw milk producers because they have made a standard of identity for milk to be vitamin A and vitamin D added.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: And so if you have if you have milk that doesn't have vitamin A and D added, it actually doesn't, it actually can't be identified as milk.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: So so um so I I want to make sure we're we're not we're not running ahead of our of our listeners here to think, oh well, this is you know really a good thing.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Good.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: The FDA is gonna make national standard of identity.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a great thing.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, actually, um we'll we'll I'll see where you go with this, but I couldn't help but but um you know chuckle at at how this has been used to actually um marginalize pure food uh and actually uh concessionize impure food.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I am in a 100% agreement with you, Joel.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: I would rather the FDA not establish standards of identity whatsoever, they just be out of the food supply, right?
27:06
SPEAKER_01: At least the federal.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're not even supposed to be within the state, but that's a whole nother conversation.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: But yes, I agree with you.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: But for for this purpose, it's it's um describing the Congress deem them responsible.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: And in the FDA's um kind of order of operations, right, their instruction manual, they are supposed to first create a standard of identity.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: So it's like creating a detailed definition of honey, and then you can create, for instance, testing protocols to figure out does this food actually compare to the standards of identity?
27:48
SPEAKER_01: So, can you call honey honey?
27:51
SPEAKER_01: And so this is their process.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: I do not agree with it because, like you said, you are at the mercy of whatever the government thinks should be the definition of that food.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: And uh you're gonna get a laugh out of this when I get to this point in just a minute about how they define the food of honey.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so the petition was in 2006, and then by 2010, like four years later, the FDA had not responded to the petition.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay, four years, no response.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: So Congress then directed the FDA to respond to the petition, basically told them you've got to respond.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, you need to address the adulteration issue of honey that we put you in charge of, right?
28:37
SPEAKER_01: A year later in 2011, the FDA denied the petition.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: The FDA claimed no standard of identity for honey was necessary.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: While this is going on, Homeland Security was actually working to actively pursue honey fraud.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: They did this in an investigation called Project Honeygate, right?
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Their goal was to crack down on honey laundering.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: So Project Honeygate started in 2008 and it became the largest case of food fraud in the U.S.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: history.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: The government discarded or sorry, the government discovered that 85 to 90% of the honey that the largest importers of honey was bringing into our country was actually part of this criminal scheme.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: So 85 to 90% of the honey coming from this large importer was part of the scheme.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: And surprise, surprise, it was Chinese imported honey, right?
29:36
SPEAKER_01: Now, this includes honey that was bought straight from the container, but also honey that was sold to food companies and added to things like processed foods.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: This was such a huge case of fraud.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: The 27 people were charged with fraud for importing and selling the adulterated honey, and some of them went to jail.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Here's one quick example.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: In 2013, there were two major honey importers.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: They were shipping fake honey to the US from China.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: They first sent it through Asia and European countries, and they were accused of evading tariffs.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: The company actually avoided$180 million in shipping duties.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: $180 million in shipping duties by trans shipping.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: That made it the biggest food fraud incident in the country's history.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: So if we put this into context, one arm of the government was cracking down on honey fraud, charging people, fining people, jailing people, but the FDA, on this other hand, is saying, oh, we don't need a standard of identity for honey.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, it's okay.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: So Congress got involved again.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: And in the 2014 Farm Bill, the USDA was required to submit a report to the FDA describing to them why a standard of identity was needed.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: So that's I mean, it's crazy.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's like trying to corral kids and get them to apologize to each other.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
31:05
SPEAKER_01: Like this is ridiculous.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's like it's like trying to nail nail jello to the wall.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's absurd.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: Like, but we got to go through this government agency to this and to this, it's just ridiculous.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: So that same year, the USDA did some more submit their report.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: Well, the FDA delayed again.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: So once again, Congress got involved and they urged the FDA to take action.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: So the FDA finally responded four years later in 2018 with a non-binding guidance recommendation on proper labeling of honey and honey products.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: So non-binding, meaning this is not a requirement.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: And what they said was they recommended that products labeled as pure honey couldn't contain added sugars.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: If it contained an added sugar, it had to be labeled as a quote, blend.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: To this day, though, the FDA has not established a standard of identity for honey.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: Instead, you'll never guess what definition they use.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Any guesses?
32:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh I uh man, I don't know.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, it has to be sweet.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: It's uh like a is it just a sweetener?
32:20
SPEAKER_01: Well, well, that's part of the definition.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: They actually defaulted to Webster's uh definition of honey.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: So they went to Webster's dictionary and used that definition.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: And this is what it is thick, sweet, syrupy substance that bees make from the nectar of plants or their secretions and store in honeycomb.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: So that is our government definition of honey.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, again, I'm not in favor of them creating these standards of identity and regulating the food supply.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: But if you think about it from somebody who wants those regulations, right, if this is the definition, how are you really going to test to see if this fake honey is fake or not?
33:04
SPEAKER_01: Like there's not there's not standards in this definition.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: This is a generic definition that you would have like like an elementary school kid would recite this as a definition of honey, right?
33:16
SPEAKER_01: The FDA also, in that guidance document that's voluntary, they did not address country of origin requirements.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: They did acknowledge that there is an adulteration issue with honey.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, they responded to the petition saying that they share concerns about adulterated and misbranded honey, but they still weren't going to respond to country of origin issues and they weren't going to create a standard of identity.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: So here's where it gets a little more interesting and a little more complicated.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: So Congress actually addressed honey fraud in the Trade, Facilitation, and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: They addressed it by directing the customs and border protection to facilitate verification of country of origin markings on imported honey.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so now we have another government agency involved, which is the customs and border protection.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: So in 2020, that agency released their strategy.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: It described their plan to start testing and to do inspections to identify these transshipment violations and to verify adulteration.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: They say this customs and border protection say that it conducts enhanced risk analysis and random sampling, but they've also said this quote Um legal resource and interagency limitations can hinder enforcement activities.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so the ABS's don't have enough money to enforce this, even though they were given$1.5 million by the Department of Homeland Security to detect adulterated honey imports, right?
34:58
SPEAKER_01: So, like how much money do they actually need to figure out if this is you know adulterated or not?
35:04
SPEAKER_00: So the Homeland Security, Cena, look, you know, you you and I both know not a single federal agency has enough money and enough people, not a single one of them.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: They all need more money and more people to be effective.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: That's probably why the FDA can't figure out a standard of identity, right?
35:24
SPEAKER_01: They don't have money to write that down.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, seriously, you can just email me and I will give you standards of identity for the honey, right?
35:31
SPEAKER_01: Like spit that out in you know 10 minutes, but they don't have the money, so we should sympathize with them, right?
35:38
SPEAKER_01: So so clearly the customs and border um department they had the money.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: They didn't do what they were supposed to do.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: Homeland Security also required that agency to submit a report in collaboration with the FDA to highlight the number of imported honey shipments that were fraudulent.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Now the FDA did actually do something in 2021 and 2022.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: They collected um honey import samples, 144 of them from 32 countries, and they found that 10% of those 144 were in violation.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Top countries were India, Vietnam, Italy, and Greece.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: So again, India and Vietnam are two of our largest importers.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: And this is what the FDA concluded from this testing.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Quote, the result of this assignment reaffirmed the need for the agency to continue to test imported honey for economically motivated adulteration.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so they know that it's being adulterated and they think that it should they should still test.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: The problem is the FDA says that they do inspect honey for accurate product labeling, including testing at times.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but various reports from different investigative journalists are indicating that testing is sparse, if any, and nobody seems to be able to track down how many samples the FDA is testing on a routine basis.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so so the FDA, who is tasked by Congress to be basically the safety gate of the honey that's coming into our country.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: They know the honey's being adulterated, they won't give a standard of identity, instead they're relying on the dictionary.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, they don't have a requirement of pollen to be in the honey.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: So country of origin testing is limited to largely paper trails.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: And we don't know how many samples they're actually testing.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: So this is our tax dollars that work.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, this is what happens when you hand it over to the government agencies, the bureaucracies that you and I can't hold accountable.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there, there again, I can't help but uh but but chuckle at the fact that, you know, one of our big showdowns with the government many, many years ago uh was, you know, they came in and said that we couldn't dress we couldn't process chickens in the open air under our open air shed.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: Because if one, here's what they said, they said if one fly, if one fly enters the shed where we're processing chickens, then those chickens are unsanitary and adulterated.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: If one fly doesn't even have to land on a chicken, if a fly just flies through the shed while we're butchering chickens, then those chickens are unsafe for human consumption because they're adulterated.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: So uh you'd rather have the chickens slaughtered and sell confined operation with harsh chemicals used on the on the cleaning supplies and the butchering supplies.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: And I mean that's that's crazy to me.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: Is this one reason why you stopped butchering on your farm?
38:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, we still butcher on our farm.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: We won that.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, we won that, we won that battle, but that that was the government's position.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: And then when we pushed back, they you know they backed off.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: But that was their you know, that was their official position going in.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: And when we got our you know elected officials and stuff involved, then they finally backed off.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: But um, but but anyway, I mean when you talk about the uh when you when you hear adulteration, you know, people you you it just sounds like this horrible, horrible thing.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so here you have, you know, for us, they said if one fly goes through where you're butchering chickens, the chickens are all adulterated.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: Here you have honey that's actually really adulterated with all sorts of things, and they just look the other way and don't and don't give a hoot.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just this this unbelievable double standard of of hypocrisy.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: We're about out of time, Cena.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: So where where do we go from here?
39:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's talk about some solutions.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, this actually was very interesting to me.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: So, this is where we're gonna get into some labels quickly.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: So, what I have found is when I'm buying honey from now on, it's either gonna be from bees that I have raised myself, or it's gonna be from a local beekeeper that I trust.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's pretty much it because as you know, we talk about labels a lot, and I I don't trust the government labels.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: We've talked about this a lot on our program.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: I will go to, I'm more inclined to trust a third-party independent organization, okay, like the non-GMO project or the detox project.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: There is a third-party label, and there's one that's actually well known, and it's called True Source Honey.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so honey producers can voluntarily undrow true sources certification process to show that they're not adulterated.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: And the last I looked, about 40% of the honey sold in the US and Canada is actually true source certified.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: So that it sounds like a good thing.
41:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, their website definitely uh says all the right buzzwords.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's an independent third-party auditing uh certification, and they talk about how they use the most high-tech testing devices.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing: I don't know the validity of that certification because I was able to find at least uh two lawsuits that have been filed against them.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: And these lawsuits are claiming that they are not the watchdog that they claim to be.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, they're helping the fraud to occur by number one, failing to monitor its members for compliance within the old their own certification process.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: Number two, using outdated and ineffective testing methods.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, and number three, they're they're claiming that when SURF is detected in the honey, true source turns a blind eye.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know if that's true or not.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: I read through the legal documents and they're charging true source with fraud, at least these two different cases.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: One was January 2020, one was March 2021.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: These are class, the March in 2021 was a class action lawsuit filed by commercial beekeepers in the US.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so these are beekeepers themselves, right, who filed this.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: If you look through the judge's um decision, the judge is saying that the lawsuits are claiming fraud, and the judge is saying that that's a high bar to reach.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: You have to have a lot of detailed specifics in order to basically be accused of found guilty of fraud.
42:49
SPEAKER_01: And in one of these cases, the judge was saying that it's just too generalized.
42:55
SPEAKER_01: It said the judge stated um the plaintiff's FAC is riddled with these broad generalizations, um, these bare bone uh conclusory allegations fail to allege with any particular of who, what, when, where, and how that the defendants engaged in the misconduct.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if there's validity to this or not.
43:22
SPEAKER_01: All I can tell you is what I have found that I'm not sure about that third party organization.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you well, you know, you know, Cena, um uh sometimes, not all the time for sure, but sometimes these third party certifications actually are are conceived by the industry as a cover to actually uh um kind of create a uh a semblance, a semblance of uh of honesty, uh of integrity that's actually uh paid for, financed, and and actually.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: a cover uh to you know to continue uh to continue doing uh uh improper you know could ever continue to do shenanigans uh but under the cover of a third party uh uh again i i don't know any more than you do whether that's the case but i can tell you just because somebody has all the right buzzwords and used the right lingo uh you and i both know that word speak clever speak greenwash all these things you they're they're they're rampant and um and and i'm with you you know your best your best honey is um you know is from a local beekeeper somebody you know or you know your own bees but what it what it does what it does say for sure is uh that the uh the uh opportunity uh for uh um for increased hives of bees uh uh right now in the US is uh is uh uh uh almost um uh limitless in other words you can you can add a hive of bees in a city in a suburban area uh on your homestead uh next to the woods I mean almost every almost every place in the country can handle um uh a couple of hives somewhere we we are we are grossly under we're under bead uh in in the US and um that's exciting because you know I'm I'm going I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna be speaking in the spring to the to the um hive to the beehive festival in Tennessee and um and these are folk these are you know domestic beekeepers and I'll certainly have my ear to the ground um or my my um my ear to the hive uh to to see what they say about this issue.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah I would be very interested in their take especially on the the third party label of true source um piggybacking on what you said just really quickly um the UCLA School of Law they said the true source was quote set up by the businesses it is supposed to control and those businesses are using true source to fraudulently control the market sell fake honey at substantially lower prices than honest beekeepers and divert sales revenue and profits to themselves.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: So again Joel and I don't know the validity of any of these claims we are not saying that true source honey is doing anything wrong.
46:33
SPEAKER_01: We're simply reporting on what has has been reported in the news and cases that have been brought against them.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: So the reason I bring it up is because when I was looking for solutions, I found that third party label and I thought oh this is a great thing I'd rather support this than the you know USDA grading system or anything like that.
46:55
SPEAKER_01: And then I looked into it and this is what I found.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: So for me it's it's come back to go to have your own bees or go local.
47:03
SPEAKER_01: And also another thing you can do and we do this with our kids you can plant um flowers that bees want to to take nectar from so we our library does this the kids can go and help and plant local flowers to help the bees thrive.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: You can do this in your own garden.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: So you don't necessarily have to even raise your own bees right if you don't want to do that.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: You can simply put flowers out and don't spray to help those bee populations.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll end my part on a nutrition note that another benefit of consuming local honey is you that it has adaptations in it that are going to help you in terms of your own health with your immune system.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's better to consume something some local source of honey to prevent things like allergies or for you just to adapt to the different stressors in the environment.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: There's been reports about the microRNAs being present in the honey and those are little pieces of genetic material right that are naturally there.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: And that those actually can up and down regulate our genes to help us better adapt to our local environment.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: So that's just an added benefit of why it would be great to support your local beekeepers.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah and quit spraying the dandelions in your lawn yes please love dandelions and and and white clover i was just with a I was just with a landscaper uh a professional you know full-time commercial um landscape guy and he said the number one the number one uh plant that he poisons the number one plant he poisons is white clover and I just about had a uh a a meltdown um you know we're we're anyway enough said um thank thank you all for joining us on another uh Beyond Labels podcast uh we hope that you'll you know do some sleuthing to find your local source and maybe even start a hive of your own they're remarkable they're amazing uh workers and you don't actually need to live in the country to have a bee a a hive of bees they're quiet they don't root they don't they don't uh move they don't cackle and they don't grunt so uh they're they're wonderful to have they're as as great as you can imagine you know even in your suburban or uh or even urban area up on the roof of your house or something.
49:29
SPEAKER_00: Anyway thanks for being with us we're signing off and we'll look forward to seeing you again next week on another Beyond Labels podcast