U.S. Beekeepers Urge Americans to Buy Source-Certified Honey
Facing continued decline in their bee colonies and shrinking honey harvests, U.S. beekeepers are urging U.S. consumers to take an easy step in helping to preserve the domestic honey business and assure the quality of the honey they choose -- buy source-certified honey.To meet the nation's honey demand, the United States imports more than 60 percent of the honey it needs from other countries.
Dutch Gold Honey Vice President of Sales and Marketing Jill Clark explains the need behind True Source Certified Honey program.
Clark: "What was happening was that Chinese honey was coming into United States but was being mis-labeled as coming from other countries. And the reason they mis-labeled the honey is because if the honey came directly from China there would have been a very significant dumping-duty placed on the honey by our government. This would have made the honey too expensive to move it into the marketplace. So to avoid this they mislabel the product and say it was from other countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan so that the honey could come into the United States and not be subject to duties and be a lot less expensive. But obviously when you do those type of activities like that you are totally lose traceability and the acts are illegal and it is very disruptive to the U.S. honey market."
Be looking for the True Source Certified logo on your next honey purchase. You can find it at Costco, Walmart, Target and other grocery stores.
Clark adds that when you purchase honey with the True Source Certified logo you know that honey can be traced back to the beekeeper.