Padded, stretched, falsified: If it says honey, there isn’t always honey inside

Sunday 01 August 2021

Padded, stretched, falsified
Where there is honey on it, there is not always honey in it

From Veit Schmelter

Germany is honey world champion. On average, each of us eats more than a kilo of the sweet bee gold per year. But professional food fraudsters around the world falsify the natural product – to the chagrin of consumers, who often do not even know what exactly they are putting on their bread.

When 72 countries work together for almost a year under the aegis of the European police authority Europol and the international criminal police organization Interpol, then it’s about crime on a grand scale. Germany also took part in the “Operation OPSON X”, which has now come to an end, one of the largest campaigns in the fight against food fraud. Such an action takes place every year. This year, the food investigators focused on honey, among other things. Because according to the Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, it is one of the most counterfeit foods in the world. This is also a real problem here in Germany.

In the ranking of the most popular spreads in Germany, honey ranks second after jam – even ahead of chocolate cream. German beekeepers do not manage to satisfy this desire on their own. According to the information, the degree of self-sufficiency in this country is just around 30 percent. The majority is therefore imported from abroad. According to the Federal Statistical Office, Germany imports more than 80,000 tons of honey worth around 250 million euros every year – more than almost any other EU country. The most important supplier countries are Mexico, Argentina, Ukraine and China. And it is precisely these imported goods that are repeatedly suspected of being falsified and stretched.

Honey swindlers use ingenious methods

The possibilities of fraud with honey are manifold. For example, companies in the Far East produce special syrups that can be used to adulterate honey. Its sugar structure is so similar to that of real honey that it can only be proven with very elaborate examinations, says Martina Janke, laboratory manager at the Institute for Apiculture in Celle. There are certain chemical characteristics, so-called markers, that make an authentic honey. “But you can also buy these markers and they can be mixed in. You have to exhaust and use modern techniques so that you can track down this very sophisticated adulteration practice. It’s not easy.”

Label fraud and the unauthorized addition of colorings, enzymes and pollen are other common methods of bringing fake honeys onto the market. It is now even possible to make edible honey that does not contain any real honey.

But because adulteration methods are becoming more and more sophisticated and adulteration practices keep changing, it is extremely time-consuming for laboratories to track down the manipulated honey. A cat-and-mouse game has developed between adulterants and food laboratories, in which the swindlers usually seem to be one step ahead of the latest analysis technology. As a rule, this is not harmful to the health of consumers. However, it becomes really unhealthy if the honey mixtures are contaminated with pesticides such as glyphosate, for example.

There is a simple goal behind the trickery: Because honey is precious and its extraction is complex, the swindlers falsify the product in order to gain as much bulk as possible and thus real money from little honey. Honey swindle has long been a global multi-million dollar business. To expose him and to fix the fraudsters apparently requires the entire power of Europol and Interpol. Incidentally, anyone who adulterates honey in Germany is committing a criminal offense. According to the Honey Ordinance, it is a natural product to which no substances may be added or removed.

The situation of domestic professional beekeepers is devastating

Nevertheless, it is hardly surprising that adulterated honey and low-quality mixed honeys are also in circulation in German supermarkets. To the suffering of the consumers, because they are massively deceived. But also to the suffering of the domestic professional and professional beekeepers. While the honey fakes from South America, Eastern Europe or Asia are sold at dumping prices of sometimes less than three euros per 500 gram jar, beekeepers are struggling with major economic challenges. Honey production has long been barely profitable in our country and the number of full-time beekeeping businesses in this country is low. Only around 50 professional beekeepers in Germany really manage to live exclusively from honey production. The rest of them run beekeeping as a sideline. In order for the domestic beekeepers to remain competitive, they too have to lower their prices considerably – and in the process they make losses. A vicious circle that is forcing more and more professional beekeepers to give up. Those who carry on do not want to give up their love and passion for honey and hope that losses in the meantime will turn into profits again at some point.

“So a fair price for a jar of honey that you could really make a living from and also feed a family from it would be at least 15 euros. With a retail price of eight to ten euros, there are 50 cents to 1 euro left over when it comes up”, says the president of the German professional beekeeping association Annette Seehaus-Arnold.

Meanwhile, there is hope for local beekeepers. It sounds bureaucratic, but it could bring transparency: the labeling requirement. “There are mixtures where we have imported honeys or stretched honeys – and the consumer does not know that. I want the consumer to be able to decide very confidently what to buy,” said Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner at ntv in mid-May advocate a Europe-wide solution, but she did not say exactly how this obligation could be structured.

Beekeepers have long been demanding that the “mixture of EU and non-EU countries” should be abolished. Instead, detailed information about the origin and, above all, the percentage composition of mixed honeys by region and also by type and pollen content would be needed on the labels. “The current information only means that the honey does not come from Mars”, Seehaus-Arnold emphasizes the demand for a labeling reform. More transparent information could make it more difficult for honey swindlers to bring their goods to the market undetected.

In the meantime, criminal proceedings against honey swindlers were initiated in two cases in Germany during the worldwide food control “Operation OPSON X”. Further investigations are to follow at European level. The number of unreported cases is likely to be many times higher.

You can find out more about the honey business, the situation of beekeepers and how consumers recognize good honey in the ntv business report “The honey business” on Sunday, August 1st, 2021 at 6.30 p.m. on ntv or on demand TVNOW.