Almost a third of the honey sold in the USA is smuggled in from China and probably full of antibiotics and heavy metals. According to a study conducted by the Food Safety News, millions of pounds of hazardous honey is being constantly consumed by the American people.

Recently, there have been rumors about arrests and convictions of smugglers, but still, the Chinese honey remains on the shelves of American markets, even with the FDA claiming that hundreds of millions of pounds of honey are safe. Food Safety News have conducted interviews with numerous experts who claim that the biggest honey packers in the USA are selling mislabeled and transshipped honey. This honey is sold at a lower price compared to the companies who do research and buy quality honey.

Richard Adee, the Washington Legislative Chairman of the American Honey Producers Association, says that this process of smuggling honey is being driven by lots of money. In Europe, big shipments of Indian honey have been blocked due to presence of dangerous substances.

Investigators also found that a big amount of honey has been artificially produced and filtered to remove any proof of contamination. This process of smuggling honey has been proven by testing and government shipping tallies, customs documents and interviews with some of the top honey importers and brokers.

Suebee Co-op is the nation’s biggest and oldest honey packer and seller, but when being investigated by Food Safety News, they went silent and didn’t offer anything on the subject, refusing to answer the calls and e-mails sent to them. The same thing happened with other honey sellers as well.

Indian honey will not be consumed in the EU

Several European countries as well as some others have officially banned questionable honey from 2010 onwards. The rest of the continents, including America, has the FDA to check on the thousands of shipments that arrive through American ports every day. According to data from the FDA, between January and June last year, only 24 shipments were stopped from entering the country. The agency did not elaborate how many shipments they have found.

Furthermore, the US Department of Agriculture says that 43 million pounds of honey have entered the country, and 37.7 of these came from India. This means that the same honey that is banned in the EU is entering the USA freely. Elise Gagnon, president of Odem International, a trading house that specializes in raw honey, says that millions of pounds of transshipped Chinese honey in the USA is coming from India and Vietnam, and the industry knows about it!

The FDA claims that there are certain regulations that forbid food which is banned in other parts of the world, but the excuse they gave for this time was that they didn’t know about it. However, Adee says that the European ban on Indian honey of questionable origin is well-known, clearly showing that the FDA is lying to us.

Odem International is the biggest honey production company in the USA, with over 80 000 bee colonies in five states, so everyone is wondering why this artificial honey is entering the USA without anyone noticing. Instead of consuming high quality organic honey, we are letting in big amounts of artificial honey that has been already banned in Europe, and the FDA does nothing about it!

They claim that they’re making a strong effort to get these illegal shipments, and they will do even better once the new Food Safety Modernization Act is passed.

What kind of honey are we eating?

According to statistics from the USDA, the USA beekeepers can supply only 48% of the nation’s requirements. The remaining 52% are supplied from 41 countries. The average American consumes 1.3 pounds of honey annually, which accounts to 400 million pounds of honey being consumed in the USA in only a year. 35% of this amount is spent by homes, restaurants and institutions, while 65% are spent by the industry making beverages, sauces, baked goods, cereals and other processed foods.

Here’s what a report by the Import Genius, a private shipping intelligence service, revealed:

  • In the last 18 months, the USA imported 208 million pounds of honey;
  • About 60% of the imported honey was imported from Asia, with 45 million pounds coming from India;
  • 48 million pounds of honey was imported from trusted suppliers from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and Canada.

Adee is a former president of the American Honey Producers Association, and he claims that this should be a warning sign to the FDA and federal inspectors. India doesn’t have the bee capacity to produce that amount of honey, making it clear that the honey comes from China.

What makes Chinese honey dangerous?

The US Comemrce Department inflicted a stiff tariff of $1.20 a pound on Chinese honey in 2001 in order to talk China out of selling its honey in the USA. However, this only made the Chinese honey producers seek alternative illegal ways of hiding their honey origin. At the same time, Chinese beekeepers were fighting a bacterial epidemic of foulbrood disease race through their hives which was spreading at an alarming rate, killing off millions of bees. The disease was being fought with Indian animal antibiotics such as chloramphenicol.

According to research, this harmful substance damaged the DNA and increased the risk of cancer in children who were taking it as an antibiotic. After the results were published, the FDA banned its use in food.

Ronald Phipps, the head of the major honey brokerage company CPNA International and co-chairman of the International Committee for Promotion of Honey and Health, says that the USA needs imported honey. However, people don’t need this mislabeled and dangerous honey – they need organic honey without the presence of antibiotics and heavy metals.

 

Source : http://makeyourlifehealthier.com/