That stuff your squeezed into your Earl Grey or dunked your McNugget in or bought with that French maid costume for "personal reasons" may not actually be honey. FDA regulations require any product labeled "honey" to contain pollen—the naturally occurring ingredient that gives honey nutritional benefits. But a recent study conducted by Food Safety News shows that 76% of honey on the shelves contains no pollen. Why would producers remove all the pollen? Honey laundering.
Chinese honey is so cheap and subsidized that it's heavily taxed by the FTC so as not to put American beekeepers out of business. But if you remove all the pollen, there's no way to trace the honey to its country of origin. "There is only one reason to ultra-filter honey and there's nothing good about it," the president of the American Honey Producers Association says. "In my judgment, it is pretty safe to assume that any ultra-filtered honey on store shelves is Chinese honey and it's even safer to assume that it entered the country uninspected and in violation of federal law."
Not only is Chinese honey bad for American beekeepers, but it has been contaminated before: a decade ago Chinese honey containing illegal animal antibiotics was sold to Smuckers and Sara Lee, who then had to recall 12,000 cases of honey and a half-million loaves of bread. Ingesting tainted honey can be fatal in some cases.
According to the tests, which were run by "one of the nation's premier melissopalynologists," 100% of the honey found in individually wrapped portions sold by Smuckers, McDonalds and KFC, and the honey found in large chain-pharmacies contained no pollen. 76% of the honey bought at grocery stores had no pollen, and 77% of the honey found in big-box stores had no pollen. "Farmers markets, co-ops and 'natural' stores like PCC and Trader Joe's" all carried honey with full amounts of pollen.
Oh, and that honey that comes in the jar shaped as Winnie the Pooh? NOT HONEY. Et tu, Winnie? As if we needed another reason to hate your guts.
A rep for the FDA said, "We have not halted any importation of honey because we have yet to detect 'ultra-filtered' honey. If we do detect 'ultra-filtered' honey we will refuse entry," and backed off its promise to make a "honey expert" available to the outlet. Who will stand up for America's bees?
