Green Means

A Safe Food Supply

By Shannon Scott

            We want to trust that stores sell us safe products, that wholesalers were honest when supplying retailers, and that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is doing its job.  Yet producers and wholesalers wanting to maximize profits don’t have the consumers’ best interests in mind.

            Possibly as much as 75% of honey on store shelves cannot technically be called honey.  Food wholesalers looking for hot bargains often purchase drastically cheaper Chinese “honey”.   Chinese honey has been super heated, called ultra filtering, watered down, and the pollen removed to hide its source.  Pollen present in most local and organic honeys is what gives honey purported health benefits and is the only failsafe way to trace its origin.  Chinese honey is also often loaded with pesticides or other harmful chemicals. 

            According to Mark Jensen, President of the American Honey Producers Association  In my judgment, it is pretty safe to assume that any ultra-filtered honey on store shelves is Chinese honey and it's even safer to assume that it entered the country uninspected and in violation of federal law.  This is exactly what studies are verifying. 

            It is important to note the distinction between ultra-filtered and filtered honeys.  Ultra-filtration eliminates healthy pollens, hides the honey’s source, and can mask pesticides or other harmful chemicals in the honey.  Filtration is a common practice to remove honeycomb, bits of bees, and other particulates.  It also slightly extends the shelf life putting off crystallization.

            To find out if honey is just simply filtered and from a U.S. source check to see if the honey’s producer is member of True Source Honey, www.truesourcehoney.com, or go to the particular honey company’s web site.  True source offers a consumer link with drafted letters to honey and food suppliers that consumers can mail asking about honey origins.  In addition, you can read the label on the honey you have in your cupboard to see if the company lists the honey’s origin.  I did this with my Costco honey – Busy Bee Clover Honey which is distributed by Golden Heritage Foods out of Kansas.  The company claims its sources are American and that the honey is simply filtered, not ultra filtered.  Yet the brand is on the list of those that tested negative for pollen. 

            Some contaminated doggy treats from China also hit our markets.  More than 600 pets have become ill since 2006, with numbers increasing with the percentage of imports. 

            A headline on Food Safety News, an online consumer information site, www.foodsafetynews.com a website I recommend checking out occasionally, reported in April 2012 that a Canadian biotech company has developed a vaccine for cattle that prevents them from excreting E. coli bacteria into their manure.  Anyone who has read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair or it’s contemporary cousin Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser has a decent understanding of slaughter house conditions and practices.  Nothing has changed.  Imagine slaughter houses and meat packing plants not having to worry about whether or not feces wind up in ground meat since E. coli no longer passes through.  If this vaccine comes to fruition and if stockyards and slaughter houses in the U.S. or that sell to the U.S. market are allowed to use it, what will consumers really be eating? 

            Fortunately there has been enough public outcry and petition signing over the use of lean finely textured beef, more notoriously called pink slime, beef fat and sinew that has been treated with ammonia and used as filler in ground beef, to now keep it out of many school lunches and McDonald’s burgers.  Yet the primary producer of pink slime, Beef Products Inc. (BPI) after suspending production at three plants, has begun a public relations campaign to convince us the product is safe and essential to the beef industry’s bottom line. 

            No doubt that the product, pink slime, fattens up BPI’s profit margins, but ammonia treated beef bi-products being safe for human consumption?  The product may be E. coli free due to the ammonia processing, but most of us can do without caustically treated food.  BPI will be forking over significant fees to their advertising agency and public relations firms to convince people that this product is ethically produced and socially acceptable to consume. 

            Public outrage and outcry reduced pink slime’s widespread use and altered an industry’s questionable practices.  Informed, savvy consumers affect huge changes for the better.  We consumers dictate markets.  Buy with short and long term human and environmental health in mind.  You make a difference, and our society will slowly become healthier and greener.  The dollars we spend speak louder than any vote we will ever cast.