The world is so bizarre anymore, even Honey importing becomes 'nasty'

[DogPoundPup]

......

snip~
The import business is plagued with a "transshipping," a practice of shipping honey to a benign port and re-labeling its origin to avoid testing or tariffs, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Tuesday.

The Commerce Department imposed a duty of $1.20 a pound on Chinese honey eight years ago, after the county was judged to be dumping the product at less than market value. Chinese honey has also been found tainted with an antibiotic, chloramphenicol, which can be deadly to humans in rare cases.

Investigators from departments as diverse as Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs and the Food and Drug Administration have become involved in the issue, the newspaper said.

"There's more crooks than ever, and it has become a real nasty business," said Elise Gagnon, president of Odem International, a Canadian honey importer.
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2008/12/30/Honey_importing_becomes_nasty/UPI-60181230675991/

[robinlynne]

1. How about simply no importing of chinese honey or any oher product found tainted.

period. done. end of report.

[Quantess]

2. Or at least, requiring "Product of China" labelling.

Let the consumers make their own informed decisions whether they want to consume food from China.

[aquart]

3. Which is why they ship it elsewhere and label it from elsewhere.

Now we have to worry where our honey is from?

The way commodities are offered and sold, I don't know how anyone knows where anything is from. Nobody is really checking all that hard. And labels can be counterfeited just like everything else.

[sandnsea]

10. Because only poor people

would have to take the risk. Why don't we demand our government work for us.

[DeschutesRiver]

4. When I was researching stuff like this a year ago

what I found was that the FDA only inspects a small percentage of what comes into our country. And if they do find something tainted or wish to reject a shipment? They do so....and the rejected goods simply are taken away and then over to another port elsewhere to try again, usually with success. It was so fantasical that I had a hard time believing our system was so lax, and that we as a nation/government to do business with countries whose standards weren't even in the ballpark with ours (and god knows, we are very far from perfect ourselves re safety issues).

You can't consider anything "real" unless you can personally authenticate it; you can't be certain there is no taint unless you craft/create/cook/bake it yourself. My belief is that this is always how it has been; however, we have faked ourselves out with all of our safety rules, our agencies, our belief that if we assign a task to .gov or whoever, it will be done in the best possible manner - our suspension of our own common sense in these matters and our desire to let supposed "experts" determine what is safe or not for us is slowly killing us.

Was tossing out some New Yorkers last night, from the last year or so, and ran across an article I shared with dh about fraud in the olive oil industry, which had never occurred to me before. I was amazed that no matter what product we are talking about, the crooks are in the majority and ahead of the pack in screwing the consumers. Here is the online version from the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mueller

Bugged me to find out about the olive oil fraud, and so does this honey deal. Except I can buy honey locally, just have to find people I can verify and trust on this product. I am out of luck on the olive oil (too expensive now anyway).

[LeftyMom]

5. As far as olive oil goes

I buy a local brand that's developed a national following. It's definitely more expensive than the mass market stuff, but it's organic, made locally from olives grown in Northern California, and the taste is fantastic. http://www.barianioliveoil.com/index.php

[DeschutesRiver]

6. thanks for that link!

I read it and also did a google search on the Bariani Olive Oil co - fascinating, and even though expensive, it is tempting stuff.

And until you posted, I'd not focused on the fact that indeed, you guys have olive trees there. Eating local in California would likely blow my Oregonian mind, when I think of olives, lemons, oranges, fish, etc that you could have access to. In Central Oregon, eating local isn't quite as well rounded:) Good stuff here for sure, by not like where you hang.

[LeftyMom]

11. There's not much I can't get local. Mostly just tropical foods like bananas and coconuts.

For example, I get tomatoes, peppers, herbs, oranges, lemons, limes and avocados just out of my Dad's tiny suburban back yard. Next year we're thinking of adding some kind of berry bush along the back fence, and maybe some grapes. Most cold-weather stuff I can get semi-locally because they can grow it in the Sierra. The olive oil gets pressed within walking distance of his house- I think they mostly grow the olives a bit north of here near Marysville, which is also a great area for nuts. In between there are a lot of rice fields. Just south of Sacramento in Galt and Lodi they've put in a lot of vineyards, which is new since I was a kid, most of that area used to be ranched. South of there is great asparagus growing area, and all of that is within an hour's drive of my home. I'm totally spoiled by cheap, plentiful and incredibly tasty food living here- I can never get over how much groceries cost everywhere else.

[DeschutesRiver]

13. Shared your post with dh

who immediately reminded me that he'd lived for awhile, as a kid, around a place called Petaluma (?). Probably has changed a ton, since that was over 40 years ago now. But he remembered eating that kind of stuff, said they had all sorts of good food easily available there. Since we've gone back to the land up here in snowy Central Oregon, we've become foodies of a sort.

But the biggest thing to recommend where we live now is the lack of population, which is both a very good and a bad thing, depending. The growing season isn't the big draw for sure. Fresh food is expensive here (and not even close to as varied as what you have) - if we didn't raise our own beef or garden (also gonna give fruit trees/berries a try this year - challenge in our short growing season), I wouldn't like depending on what they have to truck in here.

I think you hit every food I love in your post - you are in my idea of a foodie paradise:)

[riverdeep]

12. Great article.

I had no idea that olive oil was so much in the hands of the unscrupulous. Apparently, there aren't any chemical tests to determine if it's been doctored? I really find that hard to believe. There's got to be something. Maybe not easy, but something.

I found this part interesting when discussing ancient fraud in Roman times:

"In other words, the ancient Romans anticipated fraud of the kind perpetrated by Domenico Ribatti, and took more effective steps to prevent it than Italians do today".

[DeschutesRiver]

14. I think it is like everything else

there has to be a way to test and verify tainted/doctored products, but we just aren't able or willing to put the effort into doing so, esp. when it is so profitable for some to sell tainted goods. What I found oddly comforting is the fact that what we are experiencing is nothing new.

We are just in one of those times when this kind of cheating is rampant, and have to watch out for ourselves accordingly. I wonder what the Roman Empire had to let go or take its focus off of monitoring, in order to prevent olive oil fraud in their time. Seems to be human nature that there is always some kind of trade off going on.

Automatic trust, for me, is so over that it isn't fun anymore to just buy things without thinking through the what ifs.

[DeschutesRiver]

15. Something I just read re how to tell if your olive oil is pure or diluted

at http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?s=eeb4020de7a871729128c7b7a6ca9bf5&t=793172

is to put a small bit of it in a bowl in the fridge to see if it congeals (which real olive oil does). Interesting test, makes sense to me because when I've stored some of mine in my basement pantry, it congealed, which was just annoying at the time. But from reading that thread, supposedly that proves it likely wasn't diluted (except I haven't answered the question yet of what other oils could be used as a dilutant and also would congeal like olive oil).

[htuttle]

7. If you have hay fever, it's worth going to the trouble to find local honey if it's available

Locally produced honey and unprocessed beeswax (to chew on) can be very helpful in reducing the severity of hay fever attacks. Just try to find some made by bees within about 100 miles or so (so that the pollen it's made from is the same that makes you sneeze).

[shanti]

8. everything is becoming like this

I bought a rib roast for new year's dinner and do you know what the label of origin on this roast said? "Canada, Mexico OR U.S."

i never!

[Quantess]

9. They don't know?

How about a label that says "this cow probably did not have BSE".

[shanti]

17. it appears

they put this label on EVERY cut of meat - way to cover your asses, safeway! :grr:

[Vinca]

16. Oh great. I just bought some Canadian honey. Might it be Chinese? nt