Watered down, heated, pressurized honey not real at all

Much of the honey hitting supermarket shelves is derived from an ultra filtering procedure that heats honey to high temperatures, forcing the natural substance at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen. In this way, manufacturers conceal the identity of the source of the honey, which is a technique used by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey on the U.S. market for years. The Chinese are responsible for dumping dangerous antibiotics, artificial sweeteners, and leeching copious amounts of heavy metals into imported honey products.

The Food Safety News investigation

After hearing about US grocery stores being flooded with unidentified honey, Food Safety News began an investigation into several outlets that sold foreign honey. They purchased 60 different containers of honey from 10 different states, buying from a wide range of supermarkets. They then sent the honey samples to premier melissopalynologist and professor at Texas A&M University, Vaughn Bryant. What he found was that roughly three fourths of the honey contained no pollen, making it unidentifiable and unsafe. Of that average, he found that:

• 100 percent of Winnie the Pooh sold in Walmart stores had all pollen removed.

• 100 percent of honey from individual packets from KFC and McDonald’s had all pollen removed.

• 77 percent of honey from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, and Target had no traced of pollen.

• 100 percent of honey from drugstores like Walgreen’s and CVS Pharmacy had all the pollen filtered out.

• He did find out, however, that honey purchased from co-ops, farmers markets and stores like Trader Joes contained the full amount of original pollen.

Ultra filtering of pollen has to do with concealing honey’s true source

Mark Jensen, president of the American Honey Producers Association, says that removing all pollen from honey “makes no sense.” He continues, “I don’t know of any US producer that would want to do that. Elimination of all pollen can only be achieved by ultra-filtering and this filtration process does nothing but cost money and diminish the quality of the honey.”

Jensen added that pollen-void honey is most likely Chinese honey that has entered the country illegally and not inspected.

Richard Adee, who produces 7 million pounds of honey each year from multiple states, explains that real honey is valued for its flavor and nutritional value and that this “is what’s being removed during the ultra filtration process.”

He says that, “It’s no secret to anyone in the business that the only reason all the pollen is filtered out is to hide where it initially came from and the fact is that in almost all cases, that is China.”

Most honey packers are worried about what is being imported and what they are pumping into their plastic bears. Much of the honey sold in the US is imported from Asian countries. Two hundred and eight million pounds of honey have been imported over the past 18 months; 60 percent of that comes from Asian countries that typically launder honey illegally for China.

By using in-house private testing, some US manufacturers have found out that their Asian imported honey is watered down with high fructose corn syrup and a myriad of illegal sweeteners and antibiotics.

This is causing many people to seek out local trustworthy supplies of honey, who leave this precious resource in its unadulterated, nutritional form.

Look around and find a local distributor of honey. Real honey is a valuable resource.

Sources for this article include

http://www.foodsafetynews.com

http://www.motherearthnews.com

http://www.foodrenegade.com/your-honey-isnt-honey/

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More than 25,000 bumblebees fall from Oregon sky due to insecticide poisoning

Shoppers at a local Target store in Wilsonville, Oregon, just outside of Portland were shocked recently to step outside the big box depot into a sea of already dead and dying bumblebees. As reported by KATU.com news, more than 25,000 dead bumblebees were found littered around the store’s parking lot during National Pollinator Week, a direct result of European Linden trees located in planters throughout the same parking lot having been sprayed with a highly toxic insecticide known as Safari.

European Linden trees produce luscious flowers that are rich in both nectar and pollen, which is a major draw for bumblebees and other pollinating bees during bloom season. And these same trees, which are plenteous in the Wilsonville Target’s parking lot, are a major destination for local bumblebees who feed on their nutrients and help pollinate other plants.

But the property manager of the strip mall where the Wilsonville Target is located apparently had other plans for these bees, as he or she reportedly ordered that all the trees be sprayed with an insecticide chemical known as Safari, even though it is currently bloom season. According to the information page created for Safari by its manufacturer, Valent Professional Products, Safari is a broad-spectrum insecticide that kills all sorts of insects, including bees.

“To our knowledge, this is one of the largest documented bumblebee deaths in the Western U.S.,” Rich Hatfield, a conservation biologist at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (XSIC), is quoted as saying in a recent press release. “It was heartbreaking to watch. They were literally falling out of the trees.”

European Linden trees improperly sprayed with chemicals during pollination season

Hatfield and his colleagues collected bee samples from the Target parking lot on June 19, and later analyzed them to determine their cause of death. According to XSIC Executive Director Scott Hoffan Black, indiscriminate use of Safari was clearly to blame, as the chemical is never supposed to be sprayed during pollination season.

“It seems a landscape company did not follow label directions as [Safari] is not supposed to be sprayed during bloom,” Dan Hilburn, Director of Plant Programs at the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) is quoted as saying by RT.com. “We now assume this is the cause of the massive bee die-offs. Lots of bees still dying — almost all bumblebees.”

Reports indicate that ODA has also collected its own bee samples to test for pesticide exposure. ODA officials have since stated that they have never seen anything like this as far as bee deaths are concerned, and that the event is particularly ominous as it occurred during National Pollinator Week, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiative that takes place annually from June 17-23.

“I’ve never encountered anything quite like [this] in 30 years in the business,” added Hilburn.

Some local residents claim bees were deliberately murdered

Meanwhile, many local residents are outraged about the incident. Even though ODA is in the process of determining the next appropriate course of action to protect the remaining bees, which may include covering the trees with nets or applying bee repellant, some in the community are demanding answers, including an explanation from the property manager about the sprayings.

“This was not a ‘die-off’; it was a mass murder,” commented Rozzell Medina on the KATU.com article. “If anyone is interested in helping others to organize an onsite memorial for these murdered bees in the next couple of weeks, please join the Facebook group Wilsonville Bees Memorial.”

Sources for this article include:

http://www.katu.com

http://www.valent.com/professional/products/safari/index.cfm

http://rt.com/usa/mass-death-bees-oregon-090/

The post Very Sad – 25,000+ Bumblebees Fall from Oregon sky, dead, due to insecticide poisoning appeared first on Grow Real Food — Organic Gardening, Homesteading & Real Food Recipes.