"Honey mixed with syrup" : the FNSEA calls on supermarkets to remove Asian honey from their shelves
To celebrate World Bee Day, Monday May 20, the FNSEA is calling on supermarkets to remove Asian honey from their shelves. Asian honey sold much cheaper than European honey, and sometimes adulterated with added sugar, is accused of destabilizing the market and deceiving consumers. In supermarket shelves, it is not always easy to navigate among all the products on offer.
There are dozens of references and prices that vary greatly: 8 euros per kilo for the cheapest, more than 30 euros for lavender honey made in France with the address of the producer. This customer has set her sights on a pot of acacia honey but she is hesitant: “I’m trying to look at the provenance and understand what that means. I have the impression that it comes from China, Hungary and Romania.”
It is the partially Chinese provenance that makes her doubt and she is not necessarily wrong according to Didier Lesage, beekeeper and manager of the honey in France site: “There are honeys that have been analyzed in laboratories and it turns out that these are honeys that have been mixed with syrups. So we actually have the taste, however we do not find at all the benefits of honey that could be found in natural honey.”
Most honeys on sale in supermarkets are mixtures. We sometimes find several continents in the same pot. Ukraine, Chile, Vietman are often included, without specifying the percentage of each. This will soon be mandatory but the consumer can also be misled by honey imported then re-exported under another label. “There are many countries that serve as hubs for the purchase and resale of honeyexplains Eric Lelong, president of Interapi, the beekeeping inter-professional association in France. I’m thinking of India, for example, which buys honey and resells it. There are a lot of countries that do that.”
For its part, French beekeeping is having difficulty selling its products and is also suffering from climate change; it benefited from a cash advance of five million euros last February.
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