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Friday, September 07, 2018

Bee careful: Your honey might be partly corn syrup

When you think of counterfeit items, you might think of Rolexes or money. But these days you might just find something fake in your grocery cart: imported honey is increasingly likely to be diluted with cheap fillers.

Part of the problem is that Americans' appetite for honey has almost doubled since the 1990s, with prices following, but American bees produce 35 percent less honey now than 20 years ago. "This has given honey-sellers an incentive to dilute it with cheaper things like corn, rice and beet syrup," The Economist reports. "According to US Pharmacopeia’s Food Fraud Database, honey is now the third-favorite food target for adulteration, behind milk and olive oil."

Because domestic production can't keep up with demand, Americans import a lot of honey. And though there are tests to make sure honey hasn't been tampered with, the most common one is more than 25 years old and most honey counterfeiters know how to get around it, The Economist says.

Another problem: Food and Drug Administration guidelines require honey sellers to list additional ingredients, but those rules aren't legally enforceable. And the FDA's legal definition of honey may be so loose as to allow additives such as corn syrup.

Domestic production is unlikely to increase as long as beekeepers make more money renting out their bees to pollinate crops than they do from producing honey. Crop pollination "involves up to 90 percent of the commercial bee population in America, leaving few bees to pollinate everything else that requires their attention," The Economist reports. Such pollination services have been made more necessary because of dense planting, especially of almond trees, that make it less likely that natural pollination would occur. And bees are having a harder time surviving in nature because of climate change, diseases, and possibly the use of neonicotinoid pesticides.

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