# What's the deal with honey filtering? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 12, 2011, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705 "2011-11-12T17:56:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![anichini](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/71e660/32.png) [@anichini](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anichini)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2011, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/1 "2011-11-12T17:56:05Z")
This week the Food Safety News reported that most honey we buy isn’t really honey [http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/](http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/), because the filtering process removes all pollen. The implication seems to be that if there’s no pollen in the “honey”, it’s possible (more likely?) that it’s contaminated. The head of the Honey Board says the reporter got it all wrong. Is this some scare tactic planted by clever PR people at organic honey producers, some scare tactic planted by sanctimonious organic disciples, or is it genuine? What’s the straight dope? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/2 "2011-11-12T18:33:13Z")
Fuckin’ Chinese businessmen don’t give shit about who they endanger. They would kill their own children for a nickel. I try to boycott any food products made in China, but this sounds like there is no way to tell anymore. Fuckin’ Chinese. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2011, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/3 "2011-11-12T19:32:05Z")
Honey is basically bee barf. Since bees also eat pollen, and a lot is flaoting free around the hive, I assume it gets in there too. However, everyone who sells honey fliters it - there’s just too much possibility that the odd antenna or leg piece will get through the process, which basically involves pulling hanging shelves out active hives. I have never heard of a requirement that honey includes pollen - I suspect the requirement is that pure honey be the opposite - pure. Some back-to-nature organic nutbars may disagree, but they also don’t want us spraying for worms in our apples. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2011, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/4 "2011-11-12T19:39:26Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Honey is basically bee barf. Since bees also eat pollen, and a lot is flaoting free around the hive, I assume it gets in there too. However, everyone who sells honey fliters it - there’s just too much possibility that the odd antenna or leg piece will get through the process, which basically involves pulling hanging shelves out active hives. . We are not talking about ordinary filtering that has been practiced by honey producers to remove foreign objects. Only ultra-filtering can remove pollen, and it is unnecessary for the commercial production of honey: > [@](#): > > Removal of all pollen from honey “makes no sense” and is completely contrary to marketing the highest quality product possible, Mark Jensen, president of the American Honey Producers Association, told Food Safety News. > > ["](http://www.foodsafetynews.com/food-safety-news-good-honey-sample.pdf)I don’t know of any U.S. producer that would want to do that. Elimination of all pollen can only be achieved by ultra-filtering and this filtration process does nothing but cost money and diminish the quality of the honey," Jensen said. > > “In my judgment, it is pretty safe to assume that any ultra-filtered honey on store shelves is Chinese honey and it’s even safer to assume that it entered the country uninspected and in violation of federal law,” he added. > > Richard Adee, whose 80,000 hives in multiple states produce 7 million pounds of honey each year, told Food Safety News that “honey has been valued by millions for centuries for its flavor and nutritional value and that is precisely what is completely removed by the ultra-filtration process.” > > “There is only one reason to ultra-filter honey and there’s nothing good about it,” he says. > > “It’s no secret to anyone in the business that the only reason all the pollen is filtered out is to hide where it initially came from and the fact is that in almost all cases, that is China,” Adee added. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2011, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/5 "2011-11-12T20:27:14Z")
I suspect that a lot of “honey” is actually a little bit of Honey mixed with HFCS. Since HFCS doesn’t have any pollen in it, one way to determine if you are eating real Honey is to look for pollen (like one way to tell a mined diamond from a man-made one is to look for carbon inclusions). The Honey guild just wants you to know that you should be getting the real thing if you are paying for it. ---
**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2011, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/6 "2011-11-13T01:58:05Z")
As I understood it, the pollen content tells you the origin of the honey, and also that it is honey, not corn syrup. I am generally distrustful of Chinese food imports, given the previous occurrences of contaminated, misleading, and dangerous products sold to the Chinese by the Chinese. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/7 "2011-11-13T02:52:52Z")
If I wanted to pass off ultra-filtered Chinese honey as US honey, why not just blend it with US honey so it will show some US pollen? ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2011, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/8 "2011-11-13T07:47:54Z")
Blending the honey wouldn’t show ENOUGH pollen for the volume of honey. ---
**Author:** ![anichini](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/71e660/32.png) [@anichini](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anichini)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/9 "2011-11-14T07:24:15Z")
I’m still looking for evidence that the “honey” is not really honey - all most of you have done so far has been repeat what’s been in the media. And spew some profane racist rants. I’m still holding out hope I’ll learn something by posting here, so here goes: About all those honey bees dying off mysteriously over the past few years… Did that create a genuine honey shortage, giving rise to some shortcuts by big processors? Or if - as several of you suggest - the “honey” is really high-fructose corn syrup, is it just another way for the corn industry to offload its product? WERE THE CORN PROCESSORS BEHIND THE BEE GENOCIDE? Will we eventually learn, years from now, that a clandestine group of operatives funded by Cargill and AG Edwards assassinated the bees? OR has this practice been going on for years and the bees dying has nothing to do with it? ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/10 "2011-11-14T08:03:32Z")
[http://www.honey.com/nhb/about-honey/frequently-asked-questions/](http://www.honey.com/nhb/about-honey/frequently-asked-questions/) “When applied to honey, ultrafiltration involves adding water to honey and filtering it under high pressure at the molecular level, then removing the water. It is a much more involved and expensive process which results in a colorless sweetener product that is derived from honey but is not considered “honey” in the U.S.” Which then presumably gets honey flavouring added and gets sold as honey. Sounds like a trademarking type issue to me than one about fraud alone. Wiki says its more popular with supermarkets because it lasts longer, hence the problem for the people who dont make that. And now the contamination as a scare story is blowing up in their faces a bit with it causing a general fear of honey rather than just the product they’re complaining about. Otara ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/11 "2011-11-14T12:31:53Z")
I don’t understand that statement about ultrafiltered honey “lasting longer.” Honey essentially doesn’t spoil. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/12 "2011-11-14T14:17:28Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > I don’t understand that statement about ultrafiltered honey “lasting longer.” Honey essentially doesn’t spoil. Yeah, but it will crystalize and pollen helps that happen. Not that most honey crystalizes that easily but taking the pollen out could help the shelf stability. I doubt it would be worth the trouble to ultra filter if that was all they were going for though. The reality is they are scrubbing the honey to hide the origin and then claiming it is for stability. The bottom line with this article is that Chinese honey has stiff tariffs on it (for good reason), importers go to great lengths to get around them and the regulators in the US aren’t as active as some would like. Taking out the pollen is taking out the thing that would allow the honey to be identified but it is also taking out the thing that makes it “honey” in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/13 "2011-11-14T15:53:34Z")
I have tasted more raw honey and the cheap stuff at the grocery store. Can’t taste a difference. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/14 "2011-11-14T20:11:16Z")
If removing the pollen hides the origin, how do they know the pollen-less honey comes from China and not North Dakota, Guam or Australia? Is China the only country that engages in smuggling and product manipulation? ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2011, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/15 "2011-11-14T20:31:32Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > If removing the pollen hides the origin, how do they know the pollen-less honey comes from China and not North Dakota, Guam or Australia? Is China the only country that engages in smuggling and product manipulation? They don’t know that the pollenless honey is from China but they do know that ultra filtering isn’t normally done. The process is too expensive and serves almost no purpose except that it conveniently covers the true origin of the product. China clearly isn’t the only country that engages in this type of smuggling. A buyer in India might legally buy a shipload of honey from China, then label it as “Indian Honey”, then sell it to someone in Europe who then sells it to the US company. Who knows where its been? What we do know is that the pollen can be traced to the country of origin, if it is present. If one of the owners just happens to ultra filter the honey out of the kindness of their heart (you know how altruistic large companies can be) before it it gets to America then it can’t be traced any longer. But, more importantly, the FDA does not consider it honey anymore and neither should anyone else. Otherwise the word “honey” has lost its meaning. ---
**Author:** ![SeaDragonTattoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@SeaDragonTattoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeaDragonTattoo)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2011, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/16 "2011-11-15T01:54:42Z")
Anyone interested in honey production and in mass-pollenation of the nation’s crops would be very interested in “Vanishing of the Bees” documentary. It’s very well done, and touches on the problem with Chinese “honey.” It’s available on Netflix Instant. It would answer many of the OP’s questions in far better detail than will be gotten here. If I’m not mistaken, there are newer regulations on honey labeling that talk about country of origin to be listed on every bottle of honey, as in where it was harvested, not just where it’s been shipped from, since that could be a dozen different countries by the time it’s on the shelf for sale. Ah - from The National Honey Board website: > [@](#): > > Other items to CONSIDER on the label: > > ``` > Country of Origin Labeling of Honey – 2009 Revision > To follow requirements set forth in the 2008 Farm Bill, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service published an interim final rule in the Federal Register on July 8, 2009. The Rule addresses country of origin labeling requirements for packed honey bearing any official USDA mark or statement (see below information on USDA Grading Standards). The rule becomes effective October 6, 2009. Summary: packaged honey bearing any combination of USDA marks or statements must also display the name or names of the one or more countries of origin of the lot or container of honey so that the name or names are legible, permanently in close proximity to the USDA marks or statement – such as on the same sides(s) or surface(s), of a comparable size to the USDA marks or statements, and are placed by the words “Product of” or other words of similar meaning. > > ``` Once I was aware of this labeling option I started looking for it and can find it on most labels. I think it’s a good way to determine whether the packager is on the “up and up” with where the honey is from. It’s definitely been on the honey I buy from Wisconsin. If there’s no country of origin listed, I won’t buy it. I buy a lot of my food from a small local organic store that’s just down the block from me, and I’ve learned a lot since I started shopping there. I’ve moved from thinking those organic fanatics are nuts to realizing it really is important to buy as much locally as possible (which is not necessarily organic) and then also buying organic when possible. As far as honey goes, I’ve been at my local store when the honey is delivered, and it comes on a truck right from the farm in Wisconsin. I feel a helluva lot better about the honey I buy when I’ve met one of the bee keepers! I also believe you get what you pay for, for the most part. The honey I buy is about $6 a pound. I would be very suspect of “honey” that’s just a buck or two. I also buy honey from a German producer who comes to the Chicago Christkindlmarket every year. I save up just to buy their honey! Some of it is crystallized, some is as dark as molasses, it’s anywhere from almost clear to amber to orange or brown in color, and some is infused with a vanilla bean. It’s about $12 a jar for 8oz, and it’s worth every single penny. Just like any other food we take for granted, do your research. Some of the things you’ll find out may really surprise you. I truly mistrust any food item that comes from China. After the pet food scandal with melamine in 2007 that also ended up affecting baby formula and resulted in both human and animal fatalities, I really have a hard time with Chinese food products. Finding out about honey filtration well after the melamine fiasco, I really was not surprised. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2011, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/17 "2011-11-15T05:06:30Z")
Very interesting- I had no idea! I can certainly see how you can refine honey to the point where it is no longer honey but rather a processed product that happens to be derived from honey…kind of like when they process apple juice until it is chemically nothing but fructose and water and use it in “natural, no-sugar-added” juices. I would not place the only blame on Chinese producers. It doesn’t seem like that big of a crime to sell your product to a willing buyer. I would place more blame on the companies that are selling this honey. They must surely recognize that the honey coming from Good Luck Product Distribution is much cheaper than the honey coming from the Wisconsin Bee Farmer Association, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why, especially given the explanation about how prices have changed with regulation. There are people all along the supply chain who had to have known what was going on and continued anyway. That said, the actual risk seems theoretical. People have mentioned potential risks, but as far as I know, none of this honey is actually contaminated. Most of the “outrage” here seems to be about circumventing protectionist polices subsidizing US honey producers, not an actual food safety issue. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2011, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-deal-with-honey-filtering/602705/18 "2011-11-15T12:50:18Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > That said, the actual risk seems theoretical. People have mentioned potential risks, but as far as I know, none of this honey is actually contaminated. **Currently** contaminated. The linked article mentioned previously found honey in Europe, tracked back to India, and not only ultrafiltered to remove pollen but also containing banned antibiotics and heavy metals. The FDA analyzes so little honey (due to manpower and more pressing issues) that ultrafiltering only makes the problem of tracking any discovered contaminated honey even more difficult.