Supermarket chain Tesco withdrawals honey over adulteration concerns

A recent article from supply management states that “Tesco has withdrawn its own-brand honey following concerns it could have been bulked out with cheap syrups.  The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is looking into reports that Tesco’s own-brand honey could contain syrups using ordinary sugar.”

Britain only produces 10% of the 24,000 tonnes of honey it uses each year. The rest is largely imported from China. Chinese honey for export is notoriously known in the industry for being bulked with syrups such as rice and wheat. There were high tariffs brought in from the USA regarding honey imports from China due to its lack in quality. It was found that multiple honey producing companies were producing products in China then shipping to countries such as Thailand where the product received a new label of origin, this therefore created a loophole to get poor quality honey circulating into the USA and other countries.

In order to help the industry Randox Food Diagnostics created the RX misano, a user friendly, table top spectrophotometer which can be used to run a range of quality tests for honey such as; glucose/fructose, honey colour, HMF and diastase. These tests help to determine if adulteration has occurred in the honey product.

For all enquiries on our honey screening product range please email us at: info@randoxfooddiagnostics.com