Consumers in Germany are “safe” from purchasing imported honey laced with syrup, a bee expert has claimed.
Earlier this year, experts at the European Commission’s (EC) anti-fraud agency OLAF examined more than 300 samples of honey imported from different non-EU countries.
Their checks showed that 46 per cent of the products included some sort of syrup. This practice is a breach of European Union (EU) food regulations.
Now Martina Janke from the Institute for Bees in Celle, Lower Saxony, dismissed concerns that shops in Germany have been flooded with illicit honey-sugar concoctions.
Martina explained that the study which hit the headlines did not refer to samples taken from honey on supermarket shelves.
The deputy head of the Lower Saxon Institute for Bees told broadcaster NTV: “The checks took place at the EU borders before the honey arrived at the importing companies.”
Martina claimed: “In Germany, there is a great interest that pure products are on sale. The importers order examinations to prevent any adulterated from ending up on the shelves of stores in Germany.”
The Institute for Bees official added that previous EU-wide examinations would have confirmed that Germany was a “very safe marketplace” in this regard.
Asked whether consumers were able to determine whether their honey was free from any banned substances, Martina admitted that this was anything but easy.
She told NTV: “By tasting it, we are hardly capable of detecting that something is not okay. This works just for certain types of honey.”
Neither Germany nor the EU as a whole are self-sufficient when it comes to covering the rising demand for honey. Most honey imports originate from China, Ukraine, Turkey and different countries in South America.
There are more than 149,000 beekeepers in Germany, according to the Centre for Bees and Beekeeping in Mayen, Rhineland-Palatinate.
Spain is the leading producer of honey among the EU-27, followed by Romania and Greece. With 11,000 beekeepers among its 2.1 million residents, Slovenia tops the EU’s per capita apiarist ranking.
