Foodlaw-Reading
Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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DG Sante e-News, 23 March 2023
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Commission Report: EU Coordinated Action - “From the hives”: Sampling, investigations and results A copy of the report can be downloaded from the Commission website (click on image) |
Today, the European Commission has published the results of the EU-wide coordinated action “From the Hives” on honey contaminated with sugars.
To kick-off the exercise, 16 Member States (along with Norway and Switzerland) participated in an initial phase, during which honey samples were collected at borders, between November 2021 and February 2022.
As a second step, the participating countries and the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety collected traceability elements and information on suspected operators.
After this, investigations were carried out at places of import, processing, blending, and packing on suspicious imported consignments by participating countries, with the support of European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) investigators.
These investigations aimed to put a stop to operators voluntarily placing contaminated honey onto the EU market and sanction them accordingly if needed. Of the 320 samples taken at EU borders and analysed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), 147 (46%) were suspected of being non-compliant.
This suspicion rate was considerably higher in comparison to an earlier EU-wide coordinated control plan conducted in 2015-17, where 14% of the analysed samples did not comply with established benchmark criteria to assess honey authenticity.
However, the JRC applied a different set of methods, with improved detection capability, throughout the current exercise, which may explain this contrast. In total, 123 exporters were subject to controls from which 70 (57%) were flagged as having exported honey consignments suspected of being adulterated with external sugars. On the other hand, 95 importers were concerned. The exercise showed that two-thirds of them (63 importers) were implicated in the import of at least one suspicious consignment, going as high as 100% of non-compliance for a number of them. A further 44 operators have been investigated to date, of which 9 have been sanctioned.
On the basis of these results, the Commission has already called on operators for an immediate action plan to remedy the situation that is detrimental to consumers’ interests, (jeopardise consumer confidence,) undermines food value chains, creates unfair competition for EU producers and operators and jeopardises food control systems’ credibility.
The EU Honey Directive, currently under revision, will also allow including provisions to protect even better the interest of consumers and honest producers by mandating a detailed labelling of the geographical origin of honey.
The Commission also invited national authorities to increase official controls in the sector in order to dissuade fraudulent practices and sanctioning fraud perpetrators.
Background information
While the risk for consumers’ health is considered very low (based on the assumption that added sugar syrups are fit for human consumption), adulteration of honey with sugars is a challenge for consumers’ trust in the EU food chain, for operators and for the honey reputation.
The price difference between authentic honey and sugar syrups and the impossibility for the consumers of detecting extension of honey with syrups provides attractive fraud opportunities for dishonest business operators. Facing such cheaper alternatives, unfair concurrence and dumping from their competitors, professional beekeepers in the EU are receiving negative incentives to maintain their beekeeping activities, which in turn negatively impacts on the amounts of honey produced within the EU and thus on agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystems.
Information indicated that adulterated honey was present on the EU market but remain often undetected.
