Scottish Bee urges retailers and government to support homegrown honey
Wouldn’t it be incredible if UK retailers and government went the extra distance to get behind home-grown honey production as opposed to succumbing to cheap, all too often adulterated foreign exports, asks The Scottish Bee Company.
Make no mistake honey is big money! In the UK alone 50,000 tonnes is consumed for its nuanced flavours, diverse usage and far-reaching health benefits. Unfortunately, popularity comes at a price, because when we’re talking about a $9bn global category you’re always going to be a focus for unscrupulous skullduggery in the shape of product adulteration; baulking out with water, cheaper honeys, feeding the addition of quick-fix sweeteners, from corn sugar, corn syrup or beet sugar to refined sugar cane sugar. There’s even suggestions of bees being fed synthetic sugars.
At present the UK can only produce 14% of the nation’s growing honey needs which means we import just shy of 40,000 tonnes from China, a well-known hotbed of honey jiggery-pokery.
Supporting British beekeepers would be an incredible way to not only reinforce impeccable local standards but also support the rural, countryside economy, especially if like Scottish Bee Company and Black Bee, a % of bottom-line turnover is ploughed back into growing wildflower meadows.
Elsewhere in the world there appears to be a relentless cutting of corners in the pursuit of quick turnarounds which leads to settling for sub-standard product. For example, so much Asian honey is harvested prematurely, which results in the distinctive flavour profiles and aromas not having the time to fully blossom.
In some corners of the world there’s even talk of some bee hives being fed a regular diet of ‘junk food’ synthetic sugars.
Scottish Bee Heather Honey offers high levels of antioxidants with 10x more manganese than any other honey in the world. This super honey is harvested over an intense 6-week period to ensure its unrivalled quality.
By working closer with a number of hard-working local producers, the major multiples would not only be better placed to keep an eye on quality standards, they’d also be investing in the local countryside covering everywhere from the Scottish Moors to the Welsh Valleys and the Home Counties
Unfortunately, simple arithmetic suggests that something is amiss when both beekeepers and scientists agree that more honey is being sold than the planet’s bee population can possibly produce, which means industrial scale ‘padding out’ is afoot.
Only a few weeks ago The Observer reported that 24/25 of the own label honeys purchased in British supermarkets were found to be fake. Yes, more testing could take place however it’s expensive, timely, hard to conduct at scale and even harder to prove definitively.
