Fraudulent honey-makers who try to hit the Canadian marketplace with adulterated honey products are in for big surprise.

A new cutting-edge laboratory to detect fake honey sa国际传媒� the first in Canada sa国际传媒� was opened by the Worker Bee Honey Company of Chilliwack.

sa国际传媒淥ur new lab is a response to honey adulteration, a worldwide problem which is growing larger,sa国际传媒� said Peter Awram of the Worker Bee Honey.

To make the product cheaper to produce, fraudsters add rice syrup or corn syrup to the honey.

sa国际传媒淎dulteration is a threat to the reputation of Canadian honey and to Canadian beekeepers,sa国际传媒� Awram noted.

The lab will be able to detect adulterated honey using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) machine.

NMR technology analyzes the entire spectrum of a honey sample, generating an organic chemical sa国际传媒渇ingerprintsa国际传媒� which can be tracked on a database that Awram is building with samples from every honey-producer in the province.

B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said the lab will make B.C. a sa国际传媒渧ery sought-after regionsa国际传媒� for sourcing honey, especially for those who sa国际传媒渂elieve in authenticity,sa国际传媒� as well as truth in labelling.

The ag minister said she is personally passionate about bees, and said one of the nicknames from the legislature she is most proud of is sa国际传媒淭he Bee Lady.sa国际传媒�

sa国际传媒淔raud with the honey market is huge,sa国际传媒� Minister Popham told the small crowd, sa国际传媒渁nd I am a huge believer in truth in labelling.sa国际传媒�

Itsa国际传媒檚 the public trust thatsa国际传媒檚 at stake. So if beekeepers and honey producers want to use the sa国际传媒楤uy B.C.sa国际传媒� logo in future, the lab testing could serve as verification that the product is in fact B.C. honey, she said.

sa国际传媒淭his is going to resonate with consumers,sa国际传媒� Popham said.

Awram said he started down sa国际传媒渢his strange pathsa国际传媒� to honey testing after learning that about 40 per cent of what is sold as honey is something else.

sa国际传媒淚tsa国际传媒檚 the only one in Canada,sa国际传媒� Awram said about the NMR machine, and only one of two in North America.

He hopes it will act as a deterrent to prevent honey fraud in B.C.

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The same machine, which is similar to an MRI machine, can be seen in the hot Netflix documentary series Rotten, which unpacks the devastating effects of the contaminated honey flooding the marketplace. There are maybe a dozen such labs testing honey and other foodstuffs worldwide.

The problem with keeping the honey products pure and unadulterated is that prior to the emergence of NMR technology, the fraudsters managed to find ways of circumventing the tests with increasingly sophisticated methods of altering the syrups to pass as authentic honey.

The new Chilliwack lab will be able to detect the contaminants, source the floral and geographic origins of the honey, and will also flag the absence of normal honey components in fraudulent products.

Worker Bee is a family-run farm business by Jerry, Peter, and Pia Awram, with about 6,000 bee hives. The Worker Bee Honey Co. purchased the NMR machine, and a grant of $175,000 from the Investment Agriculture Foundation of B.C. will allow them to collect honey samples, test them and create a data base of all the samples.

jfeinberg@theprogress.com
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