‘Chinese Honey Laundered in U.S., Seattle Paper Exposes the continued fraud.

Big shipments of contaminated honey from China are being laundered in other countries to avoid U.S. import fees, protective tariffs or taxes imposed on foreign products that intentionally undercut domestic prices.

A five month investigation by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer found that in a series of shipments in the past year, tons of honey passed through the ports of Tacoma and Long Beach, Ca., after being fraudulently marked as tariff-free product from Russia.

It found other shipments routed through India, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and Thailand.  The report, which mirrors a story in Bee Culture in 2002, says tens of thousands of pounds of honey entering the U.S. each year come from countries that raise few bees and have no record of producing honey for export.

“In the U.S., where colonies are dying off and demand for imported honey is soaring, traders of the thick amber liquid are resorting to elaborate schemes to dodge tariffs and health safeguards in order to dump cheap honey on the U.S. market,” the newspaper reports.

“The business is plagued by foreign hucksters and shady importers who rip off conscientious U.S. packers with honey diluted with sugar water or corn syrup – or worse tainted with pesticides or antibiotics”

The newspaper cites 350 drums containing 223,300 pounds of Chinese honey that were shipped in August 2008 from Hubei Yangzijiang Apiculture Co. in Wuhan, China, loaded on a ship in Shanghai  and arrived within a month at Tuglakabad, an import house near New Delhi.  “There, according to Indian Customs reports, the honey marked ‘for re-export purposes’ was accepted by Apis India Natural Products,” it says.”  “The drums still contained instructions from the Chinese company, saying the load was to be shipped to America’s biggest and oldest honey cooperative-Iowa based Sue Bee Honey.  Tow containers of the honey reportedly were shipped to Norfolk, Va. and three went to Jacksonville, Fla.; all were later routed to Iowa.

The Post-Intelligencer says honey laundering is so rampant crackdowns are being pushed in a number of countries including Russia, India and Australia.

“While very little Russian-made honey is exported, according to the Russian Federal Customs Service, records obtained by the P-I show more than 11 million pounds of honey purportedly origination in Russia entered the U.S. last year alone.”  In February, it says, the Australian Supreme Court imposed almost a half-million dollars in fines against two companies that shipped 1.8 million quarts of Chinese honey to the  U.S. after falsely relabeling the product as Australian.

The Indian Directorate of Revenue Intelligence found that through mid-November last year, 471 out of 665 honey shipments that listed India as the country of origin actually came from China.

The U.S. imported 237 million pounds of raw honey last year .  The P-I says that honey brokers, bee experts and foreign customs officials  are suspicious that 7 of the top 12 countries appear to be exporting far more than their domestic bees produce or their export agencies acknowledge.  These countries include Vietnam, India, Thailand, Russia, Taiwa, Indonesia and Malaysia.

“Countries that have few,if any, commercial beekeepers, such as Singapore and the Grand Bahamas, are now exporting significant quantities of honey, records show.”

Vietnam is now the No. 2 honey exporter to the U.S. second to Canada.  “But Vietnamese honey officials say that much Chinese honey is being transshipped through their country, citing 24 containers that arrived in Los Angeles in December 2008.

The full article is available at: http://seattle pi.nwsource.com/local/394053_honey30.asp