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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • DECEMBER 2018 Public trust key as grade designation clarified


Elimination of “Canada No. 1” on honey welcomed by beekeepers by PETER MITHAM


in a positive way,” Reist said. Trust in what’s being sold


VICTORIA – Beekeepers are applauding a federal decision to change grade designations for honey. Canadian Food Inspection


Agency regulations that take effect in 2021 will eliminate “Canada” from the “No. 1” grade designation to avoid confusion among consumers who might think the product is from domestic bees. The change will not affect grade designations for other agricultural products. “You pick up a jar of honey


and you take a look at it and it says ‘Canada No. 1’ and you turn it around and look at the back and it says, Product of China, Argentina and someplace else,” Stan Reist, a Nanaimo beekeeper who represents BC on the Canadian Honey Council, told the annual general meeting of the BC Honey Producers Association in Victoria on October 26. “How can it be classed as Canada No. 1?” The move comes amid


growing industry concern with the integrity of its product, a key public trust issue for producers. “We have, because of the farmers markets and the media, been able to maintain a great image with the public,


is threatened by imports that could be blended with honey graded as Canadian but could be from somewhere else, and may not even be honey. Peter Awram of WorkerBee


Honey Co. in Rosedale told producers during the education day following the AGM that 25% to 40% of honey is not honey. It could be corn syrup, or even rice syrup, which has similar properties to honey that makes it almost impossible to detect.


But the bottom line is, it’s not honey, and consumers who buy it are being duped. A high-profile example was


Costco’s discovery that its Kirkland Signature brand honey was diluted. The colour of the product it was receiving changed and the price dropped. Costco ordered nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) tests and discovered that instead of being a mix of honey from the Americas, 60% to 70% was Vietnamese, or more likely Chinese.


A similar scandal broke in


Australia, and NMR testing at German labs discovered the anomalies. However, the analysis


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Cost-shared funding is available through the BC Agrifood and Seafood Market Development Program to help farmers, agri-food and seafood processors, cooperatives and associations to increase their sales outside of BC.


The program is designed to support each stage of market development, from acquiring the information, skills and plans to prepare for applicants’ domestic and international target markets, to helping experienced exporters reach new markets and expand their sales outside of BC.


PROGRAM FUNDING PROVIDED BY


What's in the jar? Nanaimo beekeeper Stan Reist welcomes initiatives boosting public trust in Canada's honey. PETER MITHAM PHOTO


depends on having a database of known honeys against which to check samples. “In the existing test, you


look for specific compounds,” Awram explained. “With NMR, you’re basically looking at the whole sample. They call it a fingerprinting technique, and you see everything that’s in there. You may not know what it is, but you have a fingerprint. So it does rely very heavily on having a database of authentic samples.” Awram is soliciting honey samples from producers (ideally, one cup each). Some brought examples to the Victoria conference. An


announcement of provincial funding for the project is expected soon. “The first thing we’ve got to do is map the landscape of honey,” he said, outlining the scale of the project. Awram has made an app


available for beekeepers to simplify participation. TrueHoney records GPS coordinates for each colony and sample, photos of the bottles containing the honey and also photos of the surrounding landscape. Ultimately, he hopes to


work with UBC researcher Leonard Foster to run each sample through a mass spectrometer. “NMR is great; mass spec is


a great complement to it,” he said. “If we put the two of them together, we’ll have a really excellent solution for looking at honey.” The sophisticated research


reflects the high stakes involved. Retailers that have run the tests have found that up to 20% of the honey on their shelves is fraudulent. He doesn’t want BC’s


prized blueberry and raspberry honeys to meet the same fate. “They get the premium.


You want to protect that reputation,” he said. “If you get too much of this out in the media, the market will just disappear. … I’m betting the farm on this technology.”


PLANNING TO TAP INTO NEW MARKETS? The BC Agrifood & Seafood Market Development Program Can Help!


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