

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey - mapleoin
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/

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nodata
"honey is [..] forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to
remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the
honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have
illegally dumped tons of their honey - some containing illegal antibiotics -
on the U.S. market for years."

What's to stop the bad honey having good pollen added?

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user24
It's interesting that pollen is being filtered out, but I'm not sure why it's
important for consumers to know this?

Am I right in thinking that this is the argument:

Claim 1) Chinese honey often contains contaminants

Claim 2) Ultra-filtering honey makes it impossible to trace origin

Therefore:

Ultra-filtered honey contains contaminants.

That's obviously fallacious reasoning, but it's all I can extract from the
article.

Additionally, I'm not convinced that pollen-rich honey is a good thing. The
only arguments I can see for keeping the pollen in are:

1) In case it came from China

2) Pollen is good for you

3) I don't want people messing with my food

In response to (1) I don't see a link between honey lacking pollen and China,
and I don't see the problem with Chinese honey so long as it really is free
from other contaminants.

(2) <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_bee_pollen_good_for_you>

(3) Our food is processed to a huge degree. I always use bread as an example
of the original processed food. Again there's no necessary link between
'additives' or 'processing' and 'bad for you', just a massive body of
anecdotal evidence. Salt and pepper and ketchup are 'additives'. Chopping
vegetables is "processing" your food. Not all processing is bad.

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epo
^3) If I lived in the US I'd be more concerned about the ubiquity of HFCS and
animal growth hormones than because imported honey may have been purified. TFA
also has the xenophobic suggestion that the pollen filtering is done by the
Chinese, perhaps (and more likely) it is done by, or at the behest of, US
importers?

Filtering out pollen may hide the origin, but surely people concerned about
health should be testing for contaminants not pollen? This article seems to be
screaming "OMG the Chinese are sending us their honey!"

EDIT: this 'news site' is the mouth piece for a lawfirm. This is good old
fashioned protectionism mixed with xenophobic mud slinging propagated by some
all-American legal vultures.

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user24
> this 'news site' is the mouth piece for a lawfirm

nice, how'd you find that out?

edit: right, yeah the domain is owned by Marler Clark LLP - see
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marler_Clark> for an extensive list of sites
owned by them.

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epo
"about us"

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user24
cunning foxes.

