FA-RM: Oh Honey

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Oh Honey
By Monica @ 7:22 PM
This article in the San Francisco Chronicle bemoans the fact that there’s really no such thing as organic honey. I believe I may have discussed this on my other blog at some point. Some of you readers may be unaware that along with some of the other hats I wear, I am also beekeeper.

It’s true. Organic labels on honey are in almost all cases certainly false. The producer may be trying to indicate that the hive isn’t medicated (there are a ton of medications used on bees, including antibiotics, anti-protozoan medications, and miticides) but there really is no guarantee that even in that case the honey is organic. Bees are wild creatures and may roam up to seven miles from the hive. Unless you own the land a 7 mile radius in every direction from your home, there are no guarantees at to what your bees have come into contact with. The SFC article is interesting and also hits on the fact that there’s very little regulation of the honey industry, insinuating that there should be more. Of course, I disagree. It’s relatively easy to tell what type of product you’re getting without resorting to an expensive regulatory scheme. I really don’t need more inane rules and labels on my food, and more of my money spent on bureaucrats to enforce these rules. In any case, we’ve already seen that the USDA supports fraudulent labeling of cooked almonds as raw ones so there’s no reason to believe the same type of thing wouldn’t happen with honey under more USDA supervision. Ideally, fraudulent labeling of honey – and there is a lot of it -- should be dealt with by lawsuits, perhaps by honey organizations that care about quality, purity, and truthful labeling of honey. The fact that most people either don’t care or if they do, know how to discern good quality honey relatively easily, is probably indication that this won’t happen.

So here’s a “public service” announcement. If you eat honey you should know that foreign honey should almost always be considered suspect, particularly if it is from China (surprise, surprise):

The United States imports most of its honey and for years China was the biggest supplier.

But in 1997, a contagious bacterial epidemic raced through hundreds of thousands of Chinese hives, infecting bee larvae and slashing the country's honey production by two-thirds.

Chinese beekeepers had two choices: They could destroy infected hives or apply antibiotics. They chose to do the latter.

That was a mistake, said Michael Burkett, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University and an internationally known authority on bees and honey.

"You hear about people shooting themselves in the foot? Well, the Chinese honey-sellers shot themselves in the head," he said.

The Chinese opted to use chloramphenicol, an inexpensive, broad-spectrum antibiotic that's so toxic it's used to treat only life-threatening infections in humans -- and then only when other alternatives have been exhausted.

"That's on the big no-no list," Burkett said. "In the U.S., Canada and the European Union, chloramphenicol is on everyone's zero-tolerance list."

Now, 11 years later, some of the honey buyers who take the trouble to test for it still find the banned antibiotic in some of their imported honey…

The best way to buy honey is to get it from a local producer or from a specialty shop of gourmet foods that carries high quality honey. The best tasting honey is “raw honey” that is not heated or filtered. It contains all the enzymes, floral essences, and pollens that are not destroyed by heat. Both the enzymes and pollen have various health benefits but even if you’re not concerned with those, raw honey just tastes better. This honey often crystallizes at a lower temperature. Most raw honey, except for tupelo honey, is a thick paste at room temperature or is at least partly crystallized. However, this isn’t a sure way to tell that the honey is raw, since even honey cut with HFCS will eventually crystallize. How to tell? Hold it up to the light. If it’s cloudy, it’s raw. If it’s completely transparent, it’s not raw. It’s really that simple.

I eat hardly any honey at all these days. Mostly I just like having the bees around because it’s a fun hobby. However, the honey my bees produce tastes absolutely amazing. Every beekeeper is biased toward his or her own honey, but I can honestly say it’s the most amazing honey I’ve ever tasted. I live in the mountains of Colorado at 8400 feet, so my bees bring in a complex mix of wildflower nectar.

If you like honey but have only eaten typical grocery store honey, which is usually from alfalfa or clover, you are missing out on a diverse buffet of gold created by the ultimate alchemists: blueberry, manuka, wildflower, orange, sage, and lavender are just a few. And if you do eat honey but are unwilling or unable to explore other flavors or sources, you may at least want to check the country of origin. There is no way to be sure that you are actually getting relatively uncontaminated honey unless you buy something produced in the United States. It is not standard beekeeping practice in the US to medicate the bees when the honey supers are on. But even though honey in the US is probably not contaminated with antibiotics, it may still be fraudulently labeled as raw -- so buyer beware.
Labels: De-regulation, Honey

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3 Comments:

At January 1, 2009 8:12 PM , Jim Stovall said...

Monica,

Thanks for your article. Lots of sensible stuff here.

I have posted a link to it on BeePROF.com.

All the best,

Jim

At January 4, 2009 2:41 PM , Jennifer Snow said...

Chloramphenicol is *not* that toxic--from what I recall it may induce a fatal reaction (severe aplastic anemia) in something like 1/25,000 people--and even then only after high dosage.

Its "toxicity" et al are complaints created and mandated by the FDA, not something indicating that it's going to cause widespread cases of poisoning in people who are exposed to a minuscule amount via honey consumption.

This is the sort of reason why I stopped listening to anybody's complaints about food--the science, even the science that conscientious people report, is so distorted by precisely this type of B.S. that it's basically impossible to know whether something is "bad" for you by reading these reports.

At January 4, 2009 2:52 PM , Monica said...

Personally, I don't want to be exposed to even minimal amounts of antibiotics in my food. Period. The negative health effects, both directly and indirectly through antibiotic resistance, are well-documented.

The use of such an effective broad spectrum antibiotic in honey production is completely irresponsible -- completely apart from the issue of whether there should be federal guidelines about its use or not. The fact that the FDA is now considering what are "safe" levels of melamine isn't exactly comforting. I don't care that it's only killed two people out of tens of thousands exposed to it.

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