BORDERS HONEY SCAM SHOCK
 
“A bitter taste of honey"

Stinging accusations of foul play in the beekeeping world have exposed the ruthless side of a global trade. Michael Durham reports Wednesday July 21, 2004The Guardian The cosy-sounding world of honey - redolent of toasted crumpets and jars with flowery labels in country shops - has been going through turbulent times. When Northumbrian honey farmer Willie Robson blew the whistle on a fellow beekeeper, Richard Brodie, for potting Argentine honey and passing it off as Scottish borders honey, the court case that resulted last week before Berwick-on-Tweed magistrates exposed some of the tough realities of an intensely competitive international business.

The most significant of these realities is that bees - like any creature - can get sick; so beekeepers administer small doses of antibiotics. The less scrupulous overstep the limits by dosing hives with excessive levels or banned drugs. One reason that Brodie's scam rang food-safety bells is that Argentine honey has come under scrutiny in recent times. For while Brodie represented small-time honey laundering, Argentina is among a number of nations suspected by EU and other industry sources of having laundered on a larger scale honey that is not their own in recent years.

Britain produces only about one-tenth of the honey it consumes. The rest, about 22,000 tonnes of the sticky amber imported from countries all over the world, is often blended before sale. But how can we be sure that the honey in the pot is what the label says?
In the boardroom of Britain's biggest honey packer, Rowse - based in the Oxfordshire town of Wallingford, at the heart of Britain's "honey valley" - operations director Brian Butcher says that for legitimate blenders, "the trouble is there are so many places in the world where people are selling dodgy honey. Once you spot a problem area, it moves elsewhere."

Thus is the opening of  a newspaper story which the Berwickshire seems to have missed-but may have gone to press before the court case in question. Mr Robson is the owner of the Chain Bridge Honey Farm one of the few tourist attractions really pushed by the Scottish Borders Tourist Board despite being a short Bee line inside England. The Honey Farm is a showcase for the honey business with a display centre full of every conceivable honey based product-candles, soap, shoe polish, body wax and yards and yards of text about bees around the world. It even has a cut away hive behind a glass screen revealing real live bees doing their thing and looking as frantic as the denizens of  a Mumbai Call centre. The farm believes in out sourcing and has hives all over the area including, some seasons, in Hutton and as far away as the Lammermuirs where the Heather Honey is harvested. And now Mr R  is a local hero, the guardian of our purity and the publicity will do his business no harm as being the real kosher (as it were) local product. The Guardian article is worth reading (Go to    http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1265467,00.html    )      Apparently it is mostly dodgy chinese honey which is imported to the UK labelled as coming from  from a number of countries including Singapore where there are no bees!

The message is simple: Trust no one except the Chain Bridge Honey Farm unless proved otherwise. Hutton Honey rules ok. Rush whilst stocks last and after the honey farm have a go at Farmer C's Amazing Maize Maze. Enjoy your extended short break.   And tell the SBTC that you would really like to have stayed longer.
  ¶ 6:20 PM