Posted on 05/14/2007 4:37:28 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
......He's been recruiting beekeepers to harvest on the grounds, and all he asks is that they follow a few simple health rules. First, no using antibiotics in their colonies; the drugs can make people sick. Second, no storing honey in metal containers; those can taint the sweet goo with toxic iron and lead.
Some 45 keepers have signed up. But many others are hostile to his efforts, which they see as a threat to their decades-old way of doing business on the cheap -- and making easy profits.
......Honey and thousands of other Chinese food products are showing up more and more often on dinner plates around the world. Last year, China said it exported $3.8 billion worth of food to the United States including vast quantities of apple juice, garlic, sausage casings, canned mushrooms and honey.
......In 2002, Chinese honey was blocked first by the European Union and then the United States after shipments tested positive for chloramphenicol, an antibiotic banned in foods by many countries because it has been known to cause a fatal blood condition. Later that year, China's Ministry of Agriculture outlawed the use of chloramphenicol in food production, and last year the Agricultural Science Association of China added it and nine other medicines, including penicillin, to its list of drugs prohibited in food.
The efforts by China helped restore shipments to the West, and in 2006 exports of Chinese honey to the United States grew by 14 percent to $27.3 million.
......No one knows what percentage of Chinese beekeepers still use antibiotics. Sun Baoli believes the figure is as high as 70 percent.
......“They say, ‘It's just a little amount of antibiotics that I use. What's wrong with it?’ ” he said
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Thanks for the ping.
If you like imported oil, you are going to just love imported food.
It’s time to drill ANWAR and to require food origins on labels.
Absolutely to both! Thinking about food from China makes me ill.
“Bee” careful !!,,,find a local honey-man...US is Best...
Worth repeating.
guess we are getting honey here as well
now i know why the bees are disappearing they got outsourced to china
Ha Ha! I think you are correct!
I wonder what American Bee keepers think about trade with China....That's quite a hit. Ah, well, it's all for the economy....
We only buy local honey. We drive right over to the beekeepers and pick it up in their glass jars. Pretty cheap, too, compared to the stuff from the stores.
Oh! And my allergist says that, yes, honey can help with allergies. It’s not as effective as shots but it does help. Plus, you’ll get it for the local stuff in bloom, not just what the shots provide for.
China is rapidly getting on my bad side. Even when the label shows a US address I still suspect China is somehow trying to poison me.
We all should think real hard about our health, our childrens health and of course our dear pets health.
Thanks for the ping.
Okey dokey.
I can sleep better tonight knowing the USDA and FDA are on the job -- unless, of course, I get violently ill in the middle of the night from something I ate that was grown in China. . .
Both issues have been on the 'burner' since the 70's.
Farmers have wanted food origin labels for decades, without succes.
There is also honey laundering going on. They ship the honey through another country because Chinese honey has been getting more scrutiny.
Why does everything with China keep ultimately connecting to Canada and then to us?
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