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The company I am General Manager exported 6,000 MT of honey IN 2015. There is a Chinese syrup that mimicks honey which has been in the market for about 20 years, first into the U.S. from China, after antidumping tariff set by US, to same US from satellite countries. US has put in effect some measures, and traffic has increased dramatically in the EU. EA-LCIRMS C4/C3 d13C tests not good enough, also importers use test of choice to avoid being detected. Now NMR is very effective. I can enclose an article that is proof enough of what I am saying. Where or whom should I address it. Thanks.
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I am a beekeeper from the Yucatan, over 250 generations have produced honey in our peninsula. For thirty years now I take care of a bee yard and a trade operation that reached 6,000 tons of honey in 2015, coming from more than 3,000 beekeepers mostly Mayans.
Beekeeping seems heading to an end. Bees face adverse environmental conditions plus beekeepers have endured massive fraud practices that are driving their producers market to bankruptcy.
Main environmental threats, loss of biodiversity and pesticides, exacerbated by GMO agriculture. also impacts other pollinators like monarch butterflies that have reached the border of extinction due to the loss of foraging sources.
Fraud comes from China, C3 sugars syrup labeled and exported as honey, shipped directly to the EU or to the US through satellite countries. The false honey, defeats authenticity tests by mimicking the pattern of honey main sugars.
Action is needed to make mandatory tests to all import entries to EU, US and the UK postBrexit with new NMR analysis. This test not only confronts each sample with the pattern of a dozen sugars, like the current EA-LCIRMS d13C test, but about 20 other compounds peculiar to each region honey.
We have to stop before it is too late.