Quote:Australia's biggest listed honey company and some of the country's largest supermarket chains face accusations of unwittingly selling "fake" honey.
Testing at a leading international scientific lab that specialises in honey fraud detection has found that almost half the honey samples selected from supermarket shelves were "adulterated", meaning it has been mixed with something other than nectar from bees.
The adulterated samples were all products that blend local and imported honey.
ASX-listed Capilano's Allowrie-branded Mixed Blossom Honey, which sources honey from Australia and overseas, and markets itself as 100 per cent honey, showed up as "adulterated" in the majority of samples tested.
Capilano strongly denied any issues with its products and criticised the type of test — known as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) — used to detect the impurities, pointing out that it differed from the official Australian test.
There is no suggestion that Capilano's eponymous brand of Australian-sourced honey has any issue or that Capilano or other brands were aware of the adulteration.
Phil McCabe, the president of the International Federation of Beekeepers' Association (Apimondia), believes the NMR test is the most accurate available and thinks consumers are not getting what they paid for.
"Adulterated honey isn't honey at all," he told 7.30.
"By and large [the impurity] is some kind of syrup that's been converted to look like honey, it tastes like honey.
"Everything about it seems to be honey, when in fact it's just sugar syrup or something else.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-03/capilano-and-supermarkets-accused-of-selli...Must admit honey is one of the few things I buy and wrongly assume it is 100% Australian and don't check the label. I will be more diligent in future although I checked my Manuka honey supplies in the pantry and it is 100% Australian.
I also missed this 2 months ago ...
Quote:Shoppers in Coles have one less choice to make when shopping for honey as the supermarket giant has dropped the Allowrie brand of honey, which is produced from mostly imported product by Australian company Capilano Honey.
The Allowrie brand is made from up to 70 per cent imported honey from countries including China, Argentina and Mexico.
The brand is the subject of a court case after a social media campaign raised questions about the origin and quality of the Allowrie brand.