And if this is the reasoning and testing that will ultimately be used to condemn local beekeepers who happen to put honey on the shelves that happen to be "tainted" with certain sugars....God help us all.
i think we can agree that if the honey is 30% beet sugar, there is a real problem? that regardless of "intentions", this should not be on the shelf as pure honey?
Of course I would never outright call this beekeeper, or any beekeeper, someone peddling "snakeoil". What a nasty thing to say about beekeepers, when you have no clue probably how any sugars got into their honey.
what if the beekeeper is large enough scale that they are having their honey tested, and selling the rejects to the unwitting local beekeepers? we are actually seeing this, this is not theory.
"snakeoil" was acebird's term, not mine.
no, in the case of the marachino cherries, no one was trying to pull anything off (except perhaps keep bees where there isn't adequate forage)....but should that end up in a jar called "pure honey"? if it does and someone is allergic to cherry syrup or corn sugar, what happens? it isn't honey, and the person selling it is ultimately responsible.
deknow
Should the beekeeper put the tainted honey in a jar? Not since it's obvious that the bees collected the cherry juice.
But I guess my point is that unless every beekeeper tests their honey, there is no way to even know what is in it.
And now that everyone jumped on this bandwagon, pointing fingers, making accusations,...is it a far stretch to think that one day we may all have too have testing to prove honey is not tainted?
Honey for all beekeepers, has always been what the bees collect. Discounting obvious sugar feeding (which lets be honest, is not a huge problem in this country) and obvious cases like the cherry company, no beekeeper could even guarantee that honey is pure.
Asking about some customer being allergic and the liability to the beekeeper from something like HFCS, has NEVER been problem up to now. But guess what....set a standard, call attention, and make statements like some do....and now you have a situation that liability as an issue.
Has there ever been a case of someone being sued? I am not aware of it.
So we will have a honey standard in place, that each and ever beekeeper has one choice to protect themselves....have your honey tested every year. And this is exactly what I said would eventually happen when this all first started. And to do so, makes every beekeeper open to the possibilities only limited by what their bees go out and collect.
I find all this about the same as beekeepers seeking protection, getting a gun, shooting themselves in the foot, suggesting it's for their best interest and the best interest of the public (which never complained before), and walking down the street bleeding all over the place, thinking they were better than they were before. The grass is always greener before you get to the other side of the fence. But it rarely ends up being true.