Why does this matter?

These additives can cause a myriad of health problems, including increasing the consumer’s blood sugar (which can lead to diabetes), abdominal weight gain,obesity, and high blood pressure. In worst case scenarios, these adulterants can affect internal organs, potentially causing a fatty liver or kidney injury. In one study comparing rats who were fed adulterated versus natural honey over 16 weeks, the rats who ate the adulterated honey were found to have significant increases in their cholesterol, triglycerides, and glucose, and showed signs of early mortality.

More concerningly, honey can contain unknown chemical additives, some of which are carcinogenic. Some of these are pesticide residues that honey bees pick up when visiting foods or when beekeepers spray them to control pests and disease. When honey bees breathe, their respiratory spiracles cause them to take in pesticides, which can accumulate overtime in their honey and hives. Various pesticides, including DDT, a potential carcinogen that can cause vomiting and seizures in high doses, have been found in honey.

Some of the largest international agrochemical companies, including BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC, and Syngenta, are profiting from selling pesticides that are considered “highly hazardous” to people, animals or ecosystems. Greenpeace has reported that biologists have found over 150 types of chemical residues in bee pollen, and has specifically named Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow, DuPont and Monsanto as entities contributing to and profiting from the sale of these toxic pesticides. 

Three of these widely used pesticides, nicotine-based clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, pose “high acute risks” for bees. These chemicals act on insect nervous systems by accumulating within bees and within the honey that bees feed to their larvae. Bees that do not die from exposure experience “sub-lethal systemic effects, development defects, weakness, and loss of orientation.” 

Bayer produces imidacloprid and clothianidin in its Gaucho and Poncho weed killers, while Syngenta produces thiamethoxam and uses this chemical in its Actara Insecticide. In 2009, the world market for these three toxins reached more than $2 billion. Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, Monsanto, and DuPont control nearly 100% of the world market for genetically modified pesticides, plants and seeds.

The “most used pesticide ever” is also part of the problem. 

Glyphosate, which is classed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a probable human carcinogen and is one of the one of the main ingredients in Monsanto’s branded Roundup herbicide. Glyphosate is not only found in bee’s hives; it is also found in honey. 

These chemicals act on insect nervous systems by accumulating within bees and within the honey that bees feed to their larvae. Bees that do not die from exposure experience “sub-lethal systemic effects, development defects, weakness, and loss of orientation.” 

Glyphosate residue has been found globally, with several studies showing that it has been found in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Union. In the U.S., glyphosate residue was detected in about 27% of honey samples directly taken from bee hives and 33% of store-purchased honey samples. In a 2018 study in Hawaii, glyphosate was found in 45.5% of honey samples that were labeled as “organic”. Even in the supposedly most natural and pure of products, carcinogens can be found.

Lastly, antibiotics and heavy metals have also been found in domestically sold honey imported from China. In fact, honey can be used to measure pollution levels in the area it was produced, since the pollen used in its production can contain heavy metals such as zinc, cadmium, and lead. Consumers who believe they are buying pure honey may be inadvertently exposing themselves to these toxins. 

Why is this happening?

Honey is particularly vulnerable to adulteration due to its limited availability, as bees have died out at alarming rates, and high demand, which has increased throughout the past two decades. The  USDA reports that U.S. importation of honey has increased by 73 percent in the last 10 years, reaching 433 million pounds imported in 2020 alone. While it is difficult to say with certainty where this trend is coming from, it appears to be linked to increasing consumer health consciousness leading to a desire for a sweetener that is viewed as healthy and natural.

Adulteration is worsened by the fact that detection tools struggle to combat this problem. As mentioned, the tests used to identify adulterated honey can be manipulated to obscure the level of adulteration. If an improper test is used, it will be unable to detect certain kinds of adulteration, such as the presence of C4 or C3 sugars. 

Some honey authenticity tests require costly instruments, time-consuming analyses, expensive chemicals, and high costs of operation and maintenance, which may limit their practical use. These factors, combined with a lack of clear standards regarding what constitutes an acceptable test score and limited testing conducted by the FDA and CBP,  make testing, in its current form, unable to properly detect honey adulteration at the rates required to combat this problem.

But even when these adulterated products are detected, they may still be allowed on supermarket shelves. Each state has its own standards for how honey should be labeled, but these standards vary greatly on what information is required on the label, including whether the USDA grade is required to be on the label, and whether contact information of the manufacturer, packer, or distributor of the honey is required to be accessible to consumers. Each state also has its own exemption requirements for some retailers and small businesses that mean these requirements, however loose they may be, do not apply.

This lack of regulation means that small-scale farmers who are producing pure honey are unable to compete with imported, adulterated honey or with large honey brands. In the past three decades, the honey market in the U.S. has shifted from mostly domestic honey production to more than half of all consumed honey being imported. 

The problem here is clear: a lack of regulation, overuse of toxic pesticides, and transparency about the composition of honey products . . . .

This shift is a result of the U.S. Beekeepers suffering from higher than average colony loss, and international bee populations have decreased due to excessive pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, and global warming. The U.S. National Agricultural Statistics show a honey bee decline from about 6 million hives in 1947 to 2.4 million hives in 2008, showing a 60 percent reduction. This is worse for smaller beekeepers whose colonies may be more susceptible to environmental changes.

The problem here is clear: a lack of regulation, overuse of toxic pesticides, and transparency about the composition of honey products means that consumers are being deceived into buying impure honey, ethical beekeepers are struggling to make ends meet, and consumer health may be suffering. 

Where do corporations fit into all of this?

Unchecked corporate power lies at the heart of this issue. Whether due to contributing to the decline of bee populations and to toxic pesticides contaminating honey or due to large corporations selling adulterated honey that is improperly labeled in supermarkets, corporations are corrupting the honey industry. 

Some lawsuits have been filed to try and stop honey being adulterated with sugar syrups and other additives. The series of lawsuits against two companies and five individuals for honey adulteration, dubbed “Honeygate”, centered on gaining accountability for corporations profiting from honey adulteration.

The first of these major lawsuits was in 2013, where three domestic honey producers, Adee Honey Farms, Bill Rhodes Honey Company, LLC, and Hackenberg Apiaries, filed suit against two major honey producers, Groeb Farms, one of the largest honey suppliers in the U.S. The lawsuit alleged that Groeb Farms bought, packaged, distributed, and sold adulterated honey produced in China as pure honey by transshipping this honey through intermediate countries, including India, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, to the United States, to obscure the actual country of origin.

In the complaint, these producers alleged that 80 million pounds of Chinese honey was imported without paying anti-dumping duties, costing the U.S. Treasury around $300 million over two years. In addition, they alleged that Groeb Farms was deceiving consumers and exposing them to the health risks of adulterated honey and that they caused “severe economic hardship” to dometic honey producers by “driving their competitors out of business, and illicitly capturing for themselves the earnings and profits that otherwise would have been earned by legitimate honey producers.”

The honey producers were successful – Groeb Farms was required to pay $2 million in fines and to enter into a corporate compliance agreement that required the company to create policies, procedures, and practices to prevent future adulteration. Through related Honeygate investigations, the Department of Homeland Security found that some of the honey was adulterated with antibiotics not approved by the FDA. This was one of the largest successful food fraud litigation cases that led to Groeb Farms’ eventual declaration of bankruptcy. 

As part of Honeygate, a related lawsuit was brought by Honey Holdings, a wholesale honey distributor, against executives of Alfred L. Wolff GmbH, alleging that these executives conspired to illegally import more than $40 million worth of honey from China between 2002 and 2009. Also indicted in this case was QHD Sanhai Honey Co. Ltd., an alleged shell company created to conceal its Chinese origin and get out of paying anti-dumping duties. Altogether, the Department of Justice estimated that the two companies and five individuals implicated in Honeygate avoided $180 Million in anti-dumping duties.

The results of Honeygate also spurred the FDA to publish guidelines on honey production in 2018, “Proper Labeling of Honey and Honey Products.” Though these guidelines are not enforceable laws, they nevertheless signified the FDA’s commitment to addressing this issue and made it clear that honey enforcement was on their radar.

Despite these outcomes providing a sense of justice, these cases have not served as a deterrence for other bad actors. The problem of honey adulteration has persisted.

In 2021, small beekeepers Henry’s Bullfrog Bees Adee honey farms and Golden Prairie honey farms, a non-profit organization that teaches veterans beekeeping skills and sells the hives and honey produced by veterans launched an ongoing class action case against other honey adulterers. This time, the case is centered on combating a honey adulteration conspiracy perpetrated by four main actors. 

These are: (1) honey importers Sunland Trading and Lamex Food; (2) honey packers Barkman Honey and Dutch Gold Honey; (3) True Source Honey, a major certification organization set up by the importers and packers, and (4) Intertek Services, a laboratory and certifier plaintiffs claim use antiquated techniques to detect fake honey. 

“Everybody knows it’s happening … I feel like they turn a blind eye.”

Plaintiffs’ complaints against the honey importers and packers are similar to those present in the initial round of Honeygate cases. Their complaints against honey testers and certifiers, however, are more concerning, as they mean that consumers should be skeptical of the authenticity of honey bought even when it claims to be third-party certified. With this wariness in mind, consumers cannot make informed decisions about the honey they buy. Expensive, third-party certified honey may be as adulterated as their non-certified counterparts.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, Gilian Wade, has described this case as the beekeepers’ “last resort” as they face increasingly intensifying competition. Since pure honey cannot be produced at the prices large retailers are used to paying for honey, small beekeepers are being priced out of the domestic honey market. “Everybody knows it’s happening … I feel like they turn a blind eye.”

As of now, the case remains in the Eastern District of California, and is facing potential dismissal due to evidentiary hurdles. Pleading fraud requires that plaintiffs prove in the early stages of the case that the defendants knowingly made false claims and that those claims hurt the plaintiffs. When the harm small beekeepers face is based on a variety of interconnected factors, including genuine competition, shrinking bee populations, and financial brides caused by an assortment of adulterating producers, it is difficult to prove that plaintiffs’ suffering is caused by a specific bad actor adulterating a specific jar of honey. 

This is true even when those bad actors may represent industry leaders, with sufficient resources and influence, to shift the culture of the honey industry towards truthful practices. Honey being a consumable creates an additional challenge, since evidence of adulteration may be eaten before it can be used in court.

Cases counteracting pesticide usage contaminating honey have faced even greater challenges. Consumer concern over the prevalence of glyphosate in honey led  the Organic Consumers Association to join forces with Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit group that advocates against toxic pesticide usage. Together, these organizations filed suit in 2016 against Sioux Honey

Association, a business that was marketing honey as “pure” and “natural” when it contained glyphosate. 

Unfortunately, in 2017, the court dismissed this case due to deciding that the amounts of glyphosate in the honey “were not ingredients or additives because the chemical had been introduced into the products by bees carrying it back to the hive rather than something the company added during production.” 

The judge also stated that consumers would not expect “pure” honey to be free from glyphosate. Since then, no similar cases have been filed in U.S. courts.

In 2018, a beekeeping cooperative consisting of over 200 beekeepers in France sued Bayer after a member whose hives were near sunflower and beet fields found glyphosate in their honey. While this case is still ongoing, it represents hope that some pesticide producers may be held accountable for contaminating honey.

What can be done?

There is a desperate need for increased regulation in the honey industry that requires standardized and frequent testing for adulterants and clearer, more standardized labeling requirements. 

In Europe, as of January of 2024, it is compulsory for honey producers and manufacturers to label the country of origin of the honey, and if it was a blend of various honeys, as a “blend of EU honeys,” “blend of non-EU honeys,” or as a “blend of EU and non-EU honeys.” This makes it possible for consumers to know where their honey was produced and if it is subject to the EU’s definition of honey, which does not allow for adulterants. Requiring these labels promotes transparency and trust in the honey industry while allowing consumers to feel connected to where their food is coming from and confident that their money is supporting ethical beekeepers.

Adulterants in the form of pesticides toxic to bees and humans also tend to be more heavily regulated in Europe. For example, the pesticide sulfoxaflor being banned in France is subject to restrictions in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Glyphosate is subject to partial bans in Austria, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. Some neonicotinoids have been outright banned by the European Commission after having been found to harm domesticated honey bees. These bans ensure that the health of bees and consumers are prioritized above pesticide usage.

Furthermore, Europe’s recognition of a need for increased monitoring and regulation culminated in eighteen European countries creating a honey testing campaign where 320 honey consignments from twenty countries were randomly sampled between November 2021 and February 2022. The results of these tests, a report entitled “From the Hives” were published in 2023, and found that 147 samples were suspected to have been adulterated. These alarming results spurred a EU Coordinated action to deter certain fraudulent practices in the honey sector. As a result of this initiative, 44 EU operators have been investigated and seven have been sanctioned. Having genuine consequences for violators of the EU directive who attempt to defraud consumers and engage in deceptive practices serves a deterrent for bad behavior. 

In the U.S., where honey is not subjected to any kind of regular, standardized testing by the USDA or by the FDA, and is only randomly and rarely subjected to testing by Customs and Borders Patrol (CBP), adulterated honey is slipping through the cracks. Consumers have no idea where the honey they are consuming comes from and whether that honey is pure, and beekeepers have difficulty distinguishing their pure product from adulterated honeys on the market. Even worse, when they discover this, there is limited legal recourse available to them, and to the ethical beekeepers who are struggling as a result.

When the market is unable to correct itself, regulation must step in and correct for market failures. Honey regulation is key to safeguarding consumer health, maintaining the integrity of the beekeeping industry, and ensuring the viability of ethical beekeeping. Governmental oversight can help promote transparency and accountability while providing real consequences for bad actors, as seen in the Honeygate cases. It is crucial for the FDA and CBP to step up and create clearer guidelines regarding honey adulteration, including by formally defining what is honey, setting maximum standards for allowed quantities of common pesticides detectable in honey, and by having more frequent, random honey testings, particularly of honey that is exported from countries known to have high concentrations of adulteration.

On top of this, it must also be easier for consumers who have unknowingly purchased adulterated honey and for beekeepers who have suffered the financial consequences of adulterated honey competing with pure honey to seek legal remedies. Barriers to accessing justice, such as the high amount of information necessary to plead fraud at the beginning of a case and making it easier for beekeepers to pursue claims alleging antitrust violations, need to be removed. Removing these barriers will make it easier for consumers and beekeepers to receive the compensation they deserve, and will serve as a further deterrent for fraudulent actors.

When the market is unable to correct itself, regulation must step in and correct for market failures.

Consumers who are able to afford it can also make an effort to support local beekeepers. To find this honey, consumers can search online to find local beekeepers, join social media groups dedicated to ethical honey consumption, and explore farmer’s markets or artisanal food stores known for sourcing from small-scale beekeepers. Additionally, consumers can search for pure honey at local co-ops or natural food stores that prioritize sustainability and transparent sourcing. By connecting directly with beekeepers and ethical retailers, consumers can ensure that their money is being used to support safe and ethical honey consumption.

By combatting honey adulteration, we can ensure that honey remains a sweet treat for generations to come.