Honey Adulteration Investigation: A Secret Formula Has Been Popular for Years, Who Created the Sweet Lie?
Honey blended with rice syrup, whose product quality even meets EU standards. In the industry it is called "specification honey."
China's annual raw honey output is about 80,000 tons, yet in 2010 honey exports reached as high as 101,100 tons, and the honey sold domestically is no less than what is exported. This surplus output can only be filled with syrup.
Real Honey, Fake Honey
Sweet as honey - this ancient Chinese blessing may be about to lose its flavor. Recently, a food science group called Green Basket randomly sampled honey sold on the market and found that those honeys displayed on supermarket shelves and claimed to have various benefits were actually fake honey.
This report, issued by the Qinhuangdao Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau Inspection and Quarantine Technology Center (hereinafter referred to as the Qinhuangdao Inspection Center), shows that among major domestic honey brands, COFCO Joycome goji berry honey and Guanshengyuan pure natural honey were detected to contain an additive called rice syrup.
According to the national honey standard promulgated in 2005 and still in force (GB18796-2005), honey must not contain or be mixed with any starch, sugar, or sugar substitute substances. This means the above two honeys are in fact fake honey.
The Qinhuangdao Inspection Center is a national-level key laboratory for bee product testing, and honey authenticity identification is one of its main specialties. Green Basket, which commissioned the center for testing, is a volunteer science popularization team composed of 11 people in total, including honey industry experts, media reporters, and lawyers. It is said that the method used in this test was the SM-R technique (detection of rice syrup in honey), which had only just emerged in March 2011.
Once the test results were released, they caused quite a stir in the industry.
On July 22, 2011, the official Weibo account of COFCO Joycome issued a statement saying that Joycome honey follows strict quality management standards throughout the entire process from raw materials to finished products, and that all products meet the requirements of relevant national standards. A Southern Weekly reporter learned that some websites that reprinted news related to the Green Basket test received letters from Jiheng Group demanding the removal of the articles. Jiheng Group is the public relations company cooperating with COFCO Joycome.
On the same day, Guanshengyuan also issued a statement on its official website, saying that its honey absolutely does not add any substance other than honey raw material during the entire production and processing process, that all honey products meet all standard requirements of GB18796-2005, and that it has qualified test reports issued by third-party authoritative testing institutions.
Zhou Lei, head of the honey project of the Green Basket science popularization group, was clearly dissatisfied with this. He said that the COFCO Joycome goji berry honey sampled by Green Basket this time was produced by Shandong Huakang Bee Industry Co., Ltd. After the test conclusion was announced, several bee enterprises in Beijing and Hubei called Green Basket, reporting that Shandong Huakang is a major adulterator nationwide, that its adulteration level is quite high, and that after adulterating, its products could even pass testing when sent to the EU.
An employee of Shandong Huakang confirmed that the company did indeed contract-manufacture COFCO Joycome goji berry honey, but did not respond to further interview questions from the Southern Weekly reporter.
On Tuesday of this week, an employee of Jiheng Group, the public relations company of COFCO Joycome, presented a latest test report from the Qinhuangdao Inspection Center to the Southern Weekly reporter. In this test report issued on July 23, the rice syrup tests for all submitted goji berry honey samples were negative (that is, no rice syrup was detected).
Same brand product, same testing institution, same testing method - why are the conclusions so different? We conduct testing as a third-party laboratory; whoever commissions us to do a project, as long as we can do it, we do it. Cao Yanzhong, director of the Qinhuangdao Inspection Center, told the Southern Weekly reporter that all test results are only responsible for the submitted samples.
In fact, such test results are not surprising. Rice syrup is now the main tool in domestic honey adulteration, and its methods are so covert and its spread so fierce that it is hard to guard against.
Rice syrup is now the main tool in domestic honey adulteration, and its methods are so covert and its spread so fierce that it is hard to guard against.