No, this isn’t typo for a story an international cartel’s efforts to hide their ill-gained profits, it turns out some companies are actively laundering honey.
Honey laundering is a disturbing business practice that is consists of disguising questionable honey and honey substitutes as the real deal.
To add insult to injury, the perpetrators are taking advantage of your efforts to improve your diet by purposefully deceiving you into eating dangerous and cheap ingredients.
Although this is not as horrifying as the stories you may have heard from Colombia and Mexico, this whole article feels like it should in the middle of a crimes and misdemeanors section of a newspaper.
HORRIFYING DISCOVERIES
It all began when some of our country’s leading food experts began to discover that some of the honey sold here was nothing more than a mixture of corn (or rice) syrup, a bit of malt sweeteners, and a tiny bit of real honey.
But wait it gets even worse, once some of these laundered honey batches were actually tested positive with heavy metal residues, toxins, antibiotics, and even a drug called chloramphenicol.
It almost seems like these companies are deliberately trying to poison us.
THE CHIEF OFFENDER
Most of this dangerous “honey” comes from China and it was dumped into the American market at ridiculously low prices. The government eventually caught this despicable scam and imposed extra fees and fines to Chinese honey.
If you thought that was the end of this story, I’m sorry to tell you it’s actually far from over.
Chinese exporters decided to counteract these measures by exporting their toxic wares to Thailand so they could be repackaged and relabeled to hide its Chinese origins.
It is then imported to the US and poisoning us once again.
This is such a serious issue that even the Justice Department has been dragged into the matter to investigate and stop this crisis.
What they discovered will blow your mind.
OUR LOCAL HONEY LAUNDERERS
Remember these brands:
Groeb Farms and Honey Solutions of Baytown.
Why? Because these two companies were actually fined and charged for deliberately selling mislabeled to the American consumer and his/her family.
This indictment was a monumental stepping-stone towards improving the quality of honey in our country because it was the first time any US packer finally admitted to laundering honey.
The honey laundering scandal has also motivated scientists to develop a method to discovering the origin of a tested batch of honey. They plan to do this by heating up the honey and studying the smoke it emanates.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Besides avoiding the brands that have been found guilty of laundering honey, I’d recommend trying to start your own bee colony or getting in touch with a local supplier of raw organic honey.
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