Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Buy less but buy better if you want the real deal
And is there honey still for tea? Indeed, says Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger – but the contents of the jar may not be as suggested by the label, as he tells Defra Secretary George Eustice
DEAR George, Further to my missive of last week may I return to the topic of bees? You may well have been made aware of my letter to you over the problems being caused to the British beekeeping sector by imports of cut-price ‘honey’ which, to put it mildly, are not at all what they claim to be.
But in case it hasn’t risen to the top of the pile yet then let me make clear my grave concern that this is an even bigger threat to the honey sector than that particularly crass decision to allow the use of neonics on sugar beet – the reactions to which have been pretty negative all the way round, as you might have noted. And rightly so.
The problem seems to be that we are importing somewhere north of 35,000 tons of honey into this country every year without checking to see whether the contents have had at least a passing acquaintance with the interior of a hive.
British beekeepers – and their legions of loyal customers – are rightfully sniffy about supermarket ‘honey’: a dead, odourless, filtered, homogenised product as far removed from the genuine, craft article as Gentleman’s Relish is from Marmite.
But what is really iniquitous is that we are allowing retailers to get away with calling it ‘honey’ when much, probably most, and in some cases all of it is anything but.
It’s amazing what you can achieve in factories in Eastern Europe and notably China with sugar syrup and some flavourings, which is what is being spread on toast (and, more disturbingly, fed to children) in millions of households. But it’s one thing to raise even more concerns about the quality of food people are eating, there is another side to this.
And that’s the fact that it is instilling consumer resistance to genuine honey which retails for considerably more than the ersatz version (which, I have been informed, is being knocked out for as little as a ludicrous 69 pence a jar).
In other words, when people walk into a farm shop or stop by a honey producer’s stall and see five or six quid a jar being asked they assume someone is trying it on and is out to make a very quick buck.
When in fact that is an entirely acceptable going rate for a jar of craft honey, given not only its highly complex flavour but its nutritional value. I know in these present times price is an overriding issue for many people when it comes to do the week’s shopping but the mantra of buy less but buy better surely comes into play here. Far better to buy proper honey and eat a little of a far more satisfying product than to slather huge amounts of bland, sweet syrup on one’s toast. One might as well go the whole hog and use golden syrup.
Thing is, George, some retailers are getting away with blue murder selling vast quantities of ‘honey’ which are anything but. And frankly,
after damaging weather extremes, Varroa, colony collapse disorder and your department taking neonics off the banned list, this is the last thing the British beekeeping sector needs at the moment.
They’re not asking for any exceptional favours, merely that the standard labelling procedures intended to warn consumers of any unexpected or unwanted ingredients are enforced on industrial honey sales with a certain degree of rigour. Not to say vigour.
Yours ever, Ian