***From The Telegraph’s Brussels Correspondent Joe Barnes:***
European Union countries are pushing for a crackdown on “honey laundering” as the bloc’s market is being flooded with cheap, syrup-laced honey from China.
Slovenia is leading a bloc of 20 national capitals urging Brussels to tighten its rules on products that can be labelled as honey after it was found that half of the honey sampled in a recent survey breached the bloc’s rules.
The study commissioned by the European Commission discovered ingredients such as sugar syrups, food colourings and water had been used to imitate more authentic honey.
“It’s basically sugar water,” an EU official told the Financial Times.
Four in five jars of honey sold in European supermarkets are blends of various ingredients, produced both in and outside the bloc.
The Slovenian’s proposal would ensure labelling would indicate the country of origin of the blends in question.
Under current rules, sellers simply have to state that the blends contain a mix of EU and non-EU honey.
THIS is what happens when you sign free trade agreements with nations that don’t have any rule of law or investigative journalism.
I recall we signed a trade agreement with Brazil.
At the time, I was strongly against it because it would force european farmers to compete with a country that has much less investigative journalism and transparency laws. In other words, unfair competition. European consumers will buy the cheap meat, hurting european farmers who respect the rules.
At the time, I was dismissed as foolish. The free-trade fanatics said the usual stuff. *”It will increase gdp, free trade is amazing, you are a leftist, an ignorant, go get an education”*
A few years later, it turns out I was right.
For a decade, Brazil’s largest meat companies exported to Europe tons of meat contamined by salmonella. Brazilian health authorities were perfectly aware of that and falsified food safety reports.
The very same thing is happening in Poland as we speak where unscreened Ukrainian grain and poultry are being actively processed and used for food within the country and not checked for pesticides and antibiotics because the government officials have companies that make ton of money from cheap Ukrainian inflows not minding the health issues.
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***From The Telegraph’s Brussels Correspondent Joe Barnes:***
European Union countries are pushing for a crackdown on “honey laundering” as the bloc’s market is being flooded with cheap, syrup-laced honey from China.
Slovenia is leading a bloc of 20 national capitals urging Brussels to tighten its rules on products that can be labelled as honey after it was found that half of the honey sampled in a recent survey breached the bloc’s rules.
The study commissioned by the European Commission discovered ingredients such as sugar syrups, food colourings and water had been used to imitate more authentic honey.
“It’s basically sugar water,” an EU official told the Financial Times.
Four in five jars of honey sold in European supermarkets are blends of various ingredients, produced both in and outside the bloc.
The Slovenian’s proposal would ensure labelling would indicate the country of origin of the blends in question.
Under current rules, sellers simply have to state that the blends contain a mix of EU and non-EU honey.
**Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/21/honey-laundering-crackdown-eu-deluge-watered-down-jars-chin/**
THIS is what happens when you sign free trade agreements with nations that don’t have any rule of law or investigative journalism.
I recall we signed a trade agreement with Brazil.
At the time, I was strongly against it because it would force european farmers to compete with a country that has much less investigative journalism and transparency laws. In other words, unfair competition. European consumers will buy the cheap meat, hurting european farmers who respect the rules.
At the time, I was dismissed as foolish. The free-trade fanatics said the usual stuff. *”It will increase gdp, free trade is amazing, you are a leftist, an ignorant, go get an education”*
A few years later, it turns out I was right.
For a decade, Brazil’s largest meat companies exported to Europe tons of meat contamined by salmonella. Brazilian health authorities were perfectly aware of that and falsified food safety reports.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39334648
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/3/18/police-raid-meatpacking-plants-in-bribery-probe
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/americas/brazil-food-companies-bribe-scandal-salmonella.html
The very same thing is happening in Poland as we speak where unscreened Ukrainian grain and poultry are being actively processed and used for food within the country and not checked for pesticides and antibiotics because the government officials have companies that make ton of money from cheap Ukrainian inflows not minding the health issues.