Adulteration business

As tests became more advanced and could detect adulteration, the industry has evolved and found new adulterants

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Honey is the most adulterated food in the world

The business of adulteration has constantly evolved to beat laboratory tests

Honey fraud is a big concern across the world

In India, government knows (but is not telling) that something is seriously wrong

Standards for honey purity have been revised again and again

Government has mandated additional and advanced tests for honey that will be exported

THE GLOBALLY accepted definition of honey given by the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (fao’s) Codex Alimentarius Commission is “(it) is the natural sweet substance produced by honeybees from the nectar of plants or from the secretions of living parts of the plants or excretions of plant sucking insects on the living parts of the plants, that bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature”. If honey is adulterated with sugar it is not honey. So, is the honey we consume adulterated with sugar?

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), our food regulator, seems to know something is amiss. In the past few years, it has amended its standards for quality of honey twice and has issued directives to the industry. And each time, the amendment was to “catch” adulteration by one kind of sugar or another. FSSAI even ordered for regulation on the import of sugar syrup as it suspected it was used for adulteration. So, either FSSAI knows what is going on, and is not telling us—the consumers—or, it is fishing around to see if it can find the honey fraud and stop it.