UK beekeepers and scientists tackle the difficult problem of honey fraud August 6, 2024
- Ana Cunha-Busch
- Aug 5, 2024
- 4 min read
By AFP - Agence France Presse
UK beekeepers and scientists tackle the difficult problem of honey fraud
Daniel MATTHEWS
Lynne Ingram is a peaceful figure as she tends a row of beehives in a wooded corner of Somerset, in southwest England.
But the master beekeeper, who has been keeping hives for more than 40 years, has found herself in a fight against a complicated and ever-evolving enemy: honey fraudsters.
The practice of adulterating honey is well known and, historically, adulterants such as ash and potato flour have been used.
Now, advances in technology and science have made this practice much easier, with “bespoke, engineered or bioengineered” syrups used as diluting agents capable of fooling authenticity tests, said Ingram.
She founded the Honey Authenticity Network UK (HAN UK) in 2021 to raise awareness of natural honey and warn of the threat posed by fraud.
“One of the impacts we're seeing around the world is the bankruptcy of beekeepers,” she said.
Adulterated honey can be sold to retailers for several times less than genuine producers can afford.
As well as producing their honey, many large-scale beekeepers have crop pollination contracts with farmers, delivering thousands of colonies to producers across the country.
If they go out of business due to unfair competition, this vital natural method of pollinating crops will be reduced and food production will suffer.
The British Beekeepers Association, which represents more than 25,000 producers and where Ingram is a honey ambassador, wants the risk of fraud to be recognized to protect the sector and consumers.
“I would like to see recognition that there is a problem here,” she said.
- Better labeling - Do you want the European Union to update its labeling policy?
In May, the European Union updated its honey regulations to ensure clearer product labeling and a “honey traceability system” to increase transparency.
In the labeling of blended honey, for example, all the countries of origin now have to appear next to the name of the product, whereas previously it was only obligatory to state whether a blend had taken place.
Labeling in the UK, which has now left the EU, is not as strict and Ingram believes that consumers are “being misled” by vague packaging.
Behind the EU's action is an apparent increase in the number of adulterated honey reaching the 27-nation bloc.
Substandard adulterated honey can have adverse effects on consumers' health, such as increasing the risk of diabetes, obesity, and liver or kidney damage.
Between 2021 and 2022, 46% of honey tested upon entering the EU was flagged as potentially fraudulent, compared to 14% in the 2015-17 period.
Of the suspect consignments, 74% were of Chinese origin.
Honey imported from the UK had a suspicion rate of 100%.
The EU said that this honey was probably produced in other countries and mixed again in the UK before being sent to the bloc.
The UK is the second largest importer of honey in terms of volume in the whole of Europe. China is its main supplier.
However, not all honey imported from the UK leaves the country. Considerable quantities remain on the domestic market.
“We think there's a huge amount on the shelves,” said Ingram, adding that adulterated honey was 'widely available' in the big supermarkets.
- Lasers - Are you preparing?
Behind the closed curtains of a research laboratory at Aston University in Birmingham, central England, researchers fighting honey fraud are using cutting-edge technology.
Aston scientists and beekeepers, including Ingram, are using light to reveal the contents of honey samples at a molecular level.
The technique, known as Fluorescence Excitation-Emission Spectroscopy (FLE), involves firing lasers at the samples.
The re-emitted light frequencies are then grouped into a three-dimensional image - or “molecular fingerprint” - of the honey being tested.
Alex Rozhin, project leader and reader in nanotechnology, said that the test “can track different molecules across the spectrum and confirm which types of biochemicals are present”.
In the dark laboratory, the light from the different honeys is visible.
The first emits an intense green and the second a cooler blue, indicating different chemical compositions.
Using FLE, Rozhin says his team “can immediately trace a concentration of fraud within the samples” with “different spectral bands corresponding to syrup (or) natural honey”.
Rozhin said that FLE is more accurate than existing tests and can provide much faster results, at a greatly reduced cost and without the need for highly trained personnel.
One of the aims of the Aston team is to create a version of FLE that can be used by honey producers or even consumers with reduced equipment or, possibly, just a smartphone.
Implementing the test in this way would also speed up the creation of a honey database which, through machine learning, could be used as a catalog of biometric signatures.
“If we get a new sample and it's been tampered with and is different from the way the database was built, we'll know there's something fishy,” said Steven Daniels, a research associate at Aston specializing in machine learning.
Ingram said the test could close international gaps in testing methods by establishing a unified standard, but the government also needed to monitor the sector.
“We need to get to grips with this,” she said.
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