Why I Only Buy Local Honey

I have always bought local honey because I have always heard that honey is a powerful immune system builder and that eating the honey from your local area provides the best immunity  for people in that area. But now there is a new reason to make sure your honey is local. A reason that you may not like. 

However, before I get to the honey, I want to take a minute to ramble about my morning out and bumping into this real live turkey!!  

About twenty minutes from our house there is a roadside nursery ( Carousel Village in Bucks County, Pa - Writghtstown) with fall attractions for families that include hayrides, family train rides, corn mazes and a little zoo which includes turkeys! I have to admit that I don't think I have ever really seen a real turkey before, especially not one that looked like this one. I have seen  a few packs of wild turkeys running around some of our road sides , but they are dark in color, not very feathery, and don't have the beautiful fan. This authentic bird really did make gurgling noises that sounded like, " Gobble Gobble" .. 

Before I get to the honey, I want to mention that  there was an ice cream store ( Wow Cow )  on the premises. I was delightfully surprised to find out that their ice cream is made from only organic milk from a local farm and all of the flavors are made with organic raw local honey, organic berries, and even some organic vegetables ( they had flavors like butternut squash). They also had flavors like lavender/honey, rosewater cardamom, blueberry lemon, in addition to the more common flavors.

I test tasted the rosewater cardamom and was instantly in heaven.

What a great find! They make ice cream cakes to order ( somewhat pricey, but absolutely beautiful and given that  everything is organic and natural, it is well worth the price. ( if you are in Bucks County 215-598-3248)

They also sell raw local honey.
I recently read an article which suggests that you only buy local honey because most other honey sold in the US is actually  from China ( and could be tainted)  and  is only packaged in the US. China removes the pollen from the honey so it can't be traced to the country of origin and it's mostly smuggled out to India who then sells it to us.

When I googled " honey and China" lots of articles came up. The consensus of the articles  seemed to be that the laundering of honey from China to India who then sells it to the US is well known.

According to one article from Nov 2011 :  ( click to go to article) 

The following is excerpts from the article about honey

Bryant, who is director of the Palynology Research Laboratory, found that among the containers of honey provided by Food Safety News: 

• 76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

• 100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

• 77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out. 

• 100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had the pollen removed.

• Bryant found that every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and “natural” stores like PCC and Trader Joe’s had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen. 

The FDA — either because of lack of interest or resources — devoted little effort to inspecting imported honey. Nevertheless, the agency had occasionally either been told of, or had stumbled upon, Chinese honey contaminated with chloramphenicol and other illegal animal antibiotics which are dangerous, even fatal, to a very small percentage of the population.

 Mostly, the adulteration went undetected. Sometimes FDA caught it.

In one instance 10 years ago, contaminated Chinese honey was shipped to Canada and then on to a warehouse in Houston where it was sold to jelly maker J.M. Smuckers and the national baker Sara Lee.

By the time the FDA said it realized the Chinese honey was tainted, Smuckers had sold 12,040 cases of individually packed honey to Ritz-Carlton Hotels and Sara Lee said it may have been used in a half-million loaves of bread that were on store shelves.

Sounds like a good reason to buy local honey. 

I was thrilled with my new find for raw local honey, fabulous organic ice cream, and some interesting zoo animals. It was a fun morning out with my grandchildren (and their parents). We took a hayride, played in the corn stalk maze and picked pumpkins.The weather was sunny and the temperature was a pleasant 60. A beautiful fall day!

What have you heard about honey? Do you buy local.

Will be shared on the following blog carnivals: 



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