Thailand Implicated In Chinese ' Honey Laundering' Scheme

[Chao Lao Beach]

There is allot of honey produced in Chanthaburi, it is the tropical bowl of Thailand, the farmers need the bees. They offer free access to the plantations to the beehive fellas. I have been told by Thais that they will pay you in some cases to put bee hives on their land at certain times of the year.

Some of it sold by the road is actually really nice.

Mango honey

Duriun honey

[EyesWideOpen]

Zolt, on 22 Mar 2013 - 13:20, said:

Well, that is just capitalism in action. Selling the cheapest shit you can get away with for the highest possible price. Americans should be applauding these asian fellows for pursuing the spirit of entrepreneurship and free trade.

What ....the....bleep ??? How in the world did America get dragged into a thread about China producing crap food ???

Are guys like you on some sort of retainer from China, or simply have a reality disconnect? lol

[jackspratt]

Chin a it's all about cheating. Everithing and allways. What ever is made in china is bad.

There was another thread about drug stock in Thailand that came from China. In that thread I said if you want to live a long time do not eat food from China. The China defenders jumped all over me. So I feel a sense of vindication seeing this story.. Not that I needed it.... :-)

What you actually said was:

Never EVER eat any consumable product from China if you want a long and healthy life

Which was as big a nonsense as what stingray has written above.

Edited March 22, 2013 by jackspratt

[jamhar]

Lets not sugar coat it

Items from TL and China are most likely fakes.

I've been to more than 20 bars looking for single malt scotch. All were fakes except 2 places. and the only reason i'm moderately sure of those is because 1) it was a new bottle with an unbroken seal, 2) tasted like it, and 3) it better be real at the prices i paid!

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

Zolt, on 22 Mar 2013 - 13:20, said:

Well, that is just capitalism in action. Selling the cheapest shit you can get away with for the highest possible price. Americans should be applauding these asian fellows for pursuing the spirit of entrepreneurship and free trade.

What ....the....bleep ??? How in the world did America get dragged into a thread about China producing crap food ???

Are guys like you on some sort of retainer from China, or simply have a reality disconnect? lol

Countries that have internal check and balances tend to have better products and quality.

Not always but if you want to boil things down to a simple rule that is a good one.

If consumers can sue the govt to follow the law or enforce the law etc then its a good bet the producers will adjust.

In China and Thailand among many other countries there are no check and balances due to a lack of an Independent judiciary system.

it's nothing about the quality of the people.. It's about the design of the system.

[Pimay1]

Zolt, on 22 Mar 2013 - 13:20, said:

Well, that is just capitalism in action. Selling the cheapest shit you can get away with for the highest possible price. Americans should be applauding these asian fellows for pursuing the spirit of entrepreneurship and free trade.

What ....the....bleep ??? How in the world did America get dragged into a thread about China producing crap food ???

Are guys like you on some sort of retainer from China, or simply have a reality disconnect? lol

I was wondering the same thing myself. Some people just can't resist country bashing even if it is off topic.

[yoshiwara]

Does anyone know and can recommend a good brand of honey here in LOS...and where it can be purchased? Thx!

Look for the German brand Langnese in the Thai supermarkets. It is excellent.

[gosompoi]

Everyday they are figuring out ways to cheat people out of there money. We asked a honey seller is that real honey they said oh yes. We ask is that why it is so expensive, they reply no it is because sugar is expensive and it takes a lot of sugar to make the the honey.

not that I am calling you a liar, but I would be VERY interested to know exactly WHERE you heard this.

i find it hard to believe that someone would say is REAL honey and then tell you that they make it with sugar.

so, please, let me know a shop or place that this happened and what product.

thanks

Didn't hear from anyone, I was there and part of the conversation. A Thai honey seller in Issan came to our school selling jars of honey, my wife asked her it was real honey. The seller said yes it is real honey. My wife asked how much and then my wife thinking it was expensive asked why it cost so much. The Issan seller replied because sugar is expensive and it takes a lot of sugar to make honey. My wife asked you made the honey and seller replied yes, she made it herself just like bees do. We replied "no thank you, we do not want any honey"

[seajae]

Everytime I go back to Australia I go to the farm next door to buy honey to bring back with me, its all natural, nothing added and it is absolutely brilliant. They sell on Ebay as well and ship it overseas, last time he was sending a stack to China so its obvious there is no good honey there.

Their online site is www.ballinahoney.com.au , I personally like their sheerfalls honey, especially the creamed honey, brilliant.

Edited March 22, 2013 by metisdead
: Font

[MESmith]

Everyday they are figuring out ways to cheat people out of there money. We asked a honey seller is that real honey they said oh yes. We ask is that why it is so expensive, they reply no it is because sugar is expensive and it takes a lot of sugar to make the the honey.

They use the sugar to feed the bees after they've taken all the honey from the hive.

link

Edit : I just read your update gosompoi. Looks like your honey was fake, but sugar is fed back to bees elsewhere.

Edited March 22, 2013 by MESmith

[kimamey]

Nothing surprise me anymore about Chinese product , well in Europe also there are a lot of issues of food safety , remember the horse meat in the frozen Lasagna ? The problem is those people have no shame in doing monkey business as far as they can make money. Personally I never bought Honey in Thailand , I always buy from the same place for years when I travel there and its a small producer on an island in NZ.

At least the horse meat scandal didn't involve any heath issues but was about misrepresentation.

[WhizBang]

 

Chin a it's all about cheating. Everithing and allways. What ever is made in china is bad.

Oh right! And Thailand can do no wrong? Rest assured that this 'fake' honey passed through Thailand with the full knowledge of any Thais involved. Anything for a baht.

[Katipo]

Does anyone know and can recommend a good brand of honey here in LOS...and where it can be purchased? Thx!

Tops. At least there is a good chance it is honey, not sugared water.

Yes, and at Villa too. I believe there is at least one imported Australian brand which should be fine

[NeverSure]

I have seen honey for sale in Chiang Mai from street vendors that was the real deal. Not bottled, but big chunks of honeycomb sealed and full of honey.

In the absence of extracting equipment it can be melted in a double boiler at as low a temp as possible, and the wax will melt and float to the top.

To much heat destroys the natural enzymes that are so healthy. Most bottled honey has been pasteurized.

Like this:

Edited March 22, 2013 by NeverSure

[JetsetBkk]

Does anyone know and can recommend a good brand of honey here in LOS...and where it can be purchased? Thx!

I like Vejpong honey. I hope it's real.

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

I have seen honey for sale in Chiang Mai from street vendors that was the real deal. Not bottled, but big chunks of honeycomb sealed and full of honey.

In the absence of extracting equipment it can be melted in a double boiler at as low a temp as possible, and the wax will melt and float to the top.

To much heat destroys the natural enzymes that are so healthy. Most bottled honey has been pasteurized.

Like this:

its a cool photo

Still its tricky because if they put out pans of cheap sugar to feed the bees then it can be very high fructose, sucrose and low quality.

Garbage in and Garbage out

[impulse]

Let's see.

For $50 I can buy a couple of hundred glass jars and for another $20 I can have a few hundred authentic looking "Product of NZ" labels made up and pasted on those jars.

Then I'm in the NZ honey business.

That's the way they think...

No matter what it says on the jar, you don't really know what you're buying here in Asia.

[belg]

mmhhh, foods from china ... i am afraid thailand is also importing much more from that country that is not at all good for human consumption

[Thai at Heart]

Everyday they are figuring out ways to cheat people out of there money. We asked a honey seller is that real honey they said oh yes. We ask is that why it is so expensive, they reply no it is because sugar is expensive and it takes a lot of sugar to make the the honey.

not that I am calling you a liar, but I would be VERY interested to know exactly WHERE you heard this.

i find it hard to believe that someone would say is REAL honey and then tell you that they make it with sugar.

so, please, let me know a shop or place that this happened and what product.

thanks

Didn't hear from anyone, I was there and part of the conversation. A Thai honey seller in Issan came to our school selling jars of honey, my wife asked her it was real honey. The seller said yes it is real honey. My wife asked how much and then my wife thinking it was expensive asked why it cost so much. The Issan seller replied because sugar is expensive and it takes a lot of sugar to make honey. My wife asked you made the honey and seller replied yes, she made it herself just like bees do. We replied "no thank you, we do not want any honey"

This is genuinely what people in Thailand consider to be honey. A given percentage of honey mixed with syrup. This country and its relationship with sugar of all forms is sometimes quite staggering. As for people mentioning OTOP earlier, every chance that this is adulterated with syrup also.

[EyesWideOpen]

Chin a it's all about cheating. Everithing and allways. What ever is made in china is bad.

There was another thread about drug stock in Thailand that came from China. In that thread I said if you want to live a long time do not eat food from China. The China defenders jumped all over me. So I feel a sense of vindication seeing this story.. Not that I needed it.... :-)

What you actually said was:

Never EVER eat any consumable product from China if you want a long and healthy life

Which was as big a nonsense as what stingray has written above.

This is your best shot ??? Wow.... You perhaps might want to review your debating techniques. Let's see, perhaps some information could help you straighten out your viewpoint. Or perhaps not....lol

By the way are you Chinese ? I cannot figure out the motivation of anyone attempting to defend Chinese food production practices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/opinion/chinas-corrupt-food-chain.html?ref=foodsafety&_r=0

"Toxic preserved fruit is the latest item on China’s expanding list of unsafe food products. Baby formula adulterated with melamine is the best known, but there is also meat containing the banned steroid clenbuterol, rice contaminated with cadmium, noodles flavored with ink and paraffin, mushrooms treated with fluorescent bleach and cooking oil recycled from street gutters."

Edited March 22, 2013 by EyesWideOpen

[MaxLee]

Thailand implicated in Chinese 'honey laundering' scheme

By Coconuts Bangkok

Bees and honeycomb: two items absent from the manufacture of Chinese honey

BANGKOK: -- According to Business Insider, Thailand is being used by China for purposes of illicit honey laundering.

Yeah, we thought that was a typo too when we first saw it, but apparently China really is using Thailand to pass off fake honey as the genuine article.

Accusations of fake honey shenanigans first came from the US Department of Justice, which pointed out that lots of honey imported to the States from Asia isnt honey at all, but rather corn sweetner, artificial flavoring an food coloring, mislabeled as an organic product.

Whats worse, these suspicious sweets often contain high levels of lead, toxins and antibiotics.

Full story: http://www.coconutsbangkok.com/uncategorized/thailand-implicated-in-chinese-honey-laundering-scheme/

-- Coconuts Bangkok 2013-03-22

So there you have it again, and it's not like I sound racist against my own ancestries, but,... This is what the powers of China and their branch in Thai politics have in common...

Cheat the poor and International lost in translation foreigners, going so far in letting US REGULAR CUSTOMERS eat rotten SH******T FOOD with the possible dangers of dying.

I feel ashamed of my own ancestries REALLY ashamed, for the few Chinese friends that I have, but something must be said even if it means being somewhat racistic against one's own ancestries, but so many things, at least in the feudal-Saving-face-ridden-possessed-Thai-Chinese-society really occurs most of the time, and YOU all in Thai Ida are witness to that...

Again, not meant to be racist against my ancestries. I just feel really ashamed...

[orang37]

Here, in Chiang Mai, there was (I haven't been there for over four years, so it may be gone) a shop for honey only, on Changklan (the Night Bazaar main street).

It was on the eastern (Ping River) left-side of Thanon Changklan, among the first group of stores after you pass the boundaries of Wat Oophakhoot, walking south from Thapae Road. Here: http://goo.gl/maps/Su83X

I used to get the extraordinarily delicious kapok honey from him many years ago, until it became so expensive because of the, I guess, increasing rarity of the trees.

But then, I discovered a man in a local small market who goes down to Ratchaburi Province, and buys the unprocessed palm-sugar cakes (nam than piep) direct from the coconut palm growers, and hauls them back to Chiang Mai. That palm-sugar's now about 43-46 baht per kilo, but it's taste is exquisite, and, it is, relatively speaking, a lower glycemic sugar with an interesting variety of nutritional factors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_sugar#Health_benefits

The untreated boiled down distillate, hardened into cakes which can very from light to dark tan colors, is very different in taste from the soft brown mushy "Mitr Phool" brand packaged palm sugar you'll find in stores, and very different from the golden-yellowish, also mushy, small half-kg or kg packages you'll find in local markets that the shop-owner has packaged themselves from a big 10kg tin: all the mushy stuff has been chemically processed in some way.

in sweetness, ~o:37;

[EyesWideOpen]

Huh ???? Why is it racist to state the well known fact that China produces a disproportional amount of poisoned food. Strange... The most basic internet search will turn up this fact. Oh well, believe as you wish. But just because you wish something does not make it so. :-) Facts speak for themselves...

Do you really want me to pull up links to the thousands of articles on poisoned food in China? Think that would be boring to my fellow members.. Here perhaps you can search this yourself.

Google >>>>>>>> poisoned food from China

Side note: I see that zhouzhou has been a member for one whole

whopping hour.... Is this jackspratt version 2.0, created for support backup? What an amazing variety of people on TV.

Edited March 22, 2013 by EyesWideOpen

[Maestro]

What we have here is a classical example of news laundering.

The Coconuts article, to which the OP links, gives two links, one to Business Insider, the other to Wired UK. Let's follow each back to the original news source, step by step.

Business Insider

Business Insider makes this statement:

So Chinese exporters simply ship their honey to Thailand or other countries, where it is relabeled to hide its origins, according to NPR.org.

Follow the NPR link and you see no mention of Thailand at all. Instead, that page mentions a US company that bought falsely labelled honey, without mentioning from what country it was imported.

Two big honey packers, including one of the largest in the country — Groeb Farms of Onsted, Mich. — admitted buying millions of dollars worth of honey that was falsely labeled.

However, the NPR page has a link to a page on the website of the United States Attorney's Office, where we find this (highlighting in bold is mine):

United States v. Groeb Farms, Inc.

The company admitted in a factual statement that two former executives purchased Chinese-origin honey for processing at its facilities and sold that honey to its domestic retail, foodservice, and industrial customers as mislabeled non-Chinese honey, and at other times, as Chinese honey, all while knowing that it had been illegally imported to avoid antidumping duties and, at times, honey assessment fees. The honey was variously described falsely as sugars and syrups instead of Chinese-origin honey, and as having originated in Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Thailand, and Vietnam, instead of China.

The above statement does not say from whom this US company, Groeb Farms, bought the honey, nor from which country it was imported. It mentions Thailand in the context that Groeb Farms falsely labelled some of the honey as having originated from Thailand. No mention is made at all that the honey was laundered in Thailand.

Wired UK

Wired UK does not mention any country where the fake Chinese honey is laundered, but gives a link to a Food Safety News investigation where we find this text:

“There are still millions of pounds of transshipped Chinese honey coming in the U.S. and it’s all coming now from India and Vietnam and everybody in the industry knows that,” said Elise Gagnon, president of Odem International, a worldwide trading house that specializes in bulk raw honey.

Search that page for the word "Thailand" and you get one hit, in a reader's comment, but it is not about honey:

I no longer eat most imported foods (except from Italy.) No farm raised shrimp from Thailand, etc...

[ZhouZhou]

So an US company imported real honey and that real honey was falsely labeled as sugar or syrup because for the latter are maybe lesser import restriction.

and the xenophobes in america are afraid to eat honey from china so it got relabeled as honey from India or Mongolia or somewhere else to avoid that yellow peril scare.

[jackspratt]

Huh ???? Why is it racist to state the well known fact that China produces a disproportional amount of poisoned food. Strange... The most basic internet search will turn up this fact. Oh well, believe as you wish. But just because you wish something does not make it so. :-) Facts speak for themselves...

Do you really want me to pull up links to the thousands of articles on poisoned food in China? Think that would be boring to my fellow members.. Here perhaps you can search this yourself.

Google >>>>>>>> poisoned food from China

Side note: I see that zhouzhou has been a member for one whole

whopping hour.... Is this jackspratt version 2.0, created for support backup? What an amazing variety of people on TV.

Anyone with their eyes even partially open would not make a nonsensical and hysterical statement such as:

>Never EVER eat any consumable product from China if you want a long and healthy life

Which is very different to:

............China produces a disproportional amount of poisoned food................

ps my ethnicity is irrelevant, and I certainly don't need backup when pointing out the stupidity of some of the statements made on TVF.

[Pimay1]

So an US company imported real honey and that real honey was falsely labeled as sugar or syrup because for the latter are maybe lesser import restriction.

and the xenophobes in america are afraid to eat honey from china so it got relabeled as honey from India or Mongolia or somewhere else to avoid that yellow peril scare.

Please take your medicine.

[EyesWideOpen]

The full article was quite interesting from Food Safety News.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/08/honey-laundering/

"However, during that same period, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that almost 43 million pounds of honey entered the U.S. Of that, the Department of Commerce said 37.7 million pounds came from India, the same honey that is banned in the EU because it contained animal medicine and lead and lacked the proper paperwork to prove it didn’t come from China."

How odd that the country India, with honey so poor that it is banned in the EU, is used by China as a transhipping country for its own poor honey...

So yes it is the same fake honey being shipped abroad by China, but it appears that Thailand is not really used. By the numbers above clearly India is the main culprit in hiding the origins of Chinese honey. Strange that Coconuts Bangkok http://www.coconutsbangkok.com/news/thailand-implicated-in-chinese-honey-laundering-scheme/#

would try to drag Thailand into this mess.

Coconutsbangkok is simply quoting the Business Insider article which is incorrect in its interpretation of the NPR.org article as Maestro pointed out. So it sure seems Thailand is off the hook..

Edited March 22, 2013 by EyesWideOpen

[Naam]

Buy aussie honey, its guarenteed to be the real stuff

If you want good honey, then you have to pay for it......Australia produces some good stuff.

People who eat that 99 baht Thai stuff are just eating mostly sugar.

honey is mostly a variety of sugars. disappointed?

[ZhouZhou]

The full article was quite interesting from Food Safety News.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/08/honey-laundering/

"However, during that same period, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that almost 43 million pounds of honey entered the U.S. Of that, the Department of Commerce said 37.7 million pounds came from India, the same honey that is banned in the EU because it contained animal medicine and lead and lacked the proper paperwork to prove it didn’t come from China."

How odd that the country India, with honey so poor that it is banned in the EU, is used by China as a transhipping country for its own poor honey...

So yes it is the same poisoned honey being shipped abroad by China, but it appears that Thailand is not really used. By the numbers above clearly India is the main culprit in hiding the origins of Chinese honey. Strange that Coconuts Bangkok http://www.coconutsbangkok.com/news/thailand-implicated-in-chinese-honey-laundering-scheme/#

would try to drag Thailand into this mess.....tabloid journalism ???

its also not about fake honey, but real honey that got falsely labeled as sugar syrup to import it.

why do make people a story about fake honey from china out of it?

because that simplified and false story pleased their readers xenophobia and bias that anything from China or Thailand is bad.

i bet that "news source " is not chinese owned.