South Africa’s beekeepers are pleased that the state is refocusing its efforts on identifying and confiscating incorrectly labelled adulterated (fake) honey products. These kinds of products are a major stumbling block to the country’s essential existing and aspirant apiarists.
By Lloyd Phillips, senior journalist at African Farming and Landbouweekblad
Inspectors from the Department of Agriculture, supported by police officers, recently carried out a blitz on retailers within the Eastern Cape’s Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality to identify and confiscate any incorrectly labelled adulterated honey products that may have been on their shelves.
Social media posts of the much-publicised operation revealed that both small informal shops and large formal retailers were inspected. Although the Department of Agriculture has not yet revealed the details of what its inspectors found, it appears that substantial quantities of incorrectly labelled adulterated honey were identified and confiscated.
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John Steenhuisen, Minister of Agriculture, spoke at a Beekeeping Awareness Field Day held in Cape Town on 10 November. He highlighted that bees provide a diversity of essential services and products, including “one of the most precious natural products on earth, honey”.
Steenhuisen explained that honey is an economic lifeline for South Africa’s beekeepers, who, according to the South African Bee Industry Organisation (SABIO), number approximately 6 000.
He added that South Africa consumes nearly 5 000 tonnes of natural honey annually, whereas the country produces only about half of this demand. A total of 80% of the shortfall for pure natural honey is imported from China, and the balance from Zambia, India, Poland and Yemen.
“Since there is such high demand for this product, we have seen an increase in very poor quality and sometimes [incorrectly labelled] adulterated honey [in South Africa].”
Renewed Sting Against Misleading Products
Steenhuisen has tasked the Department of Agriculture’s inspection services with a renewed effort to remove products that are misleadingly labelled and sold as honey in shops.
Regulation R. 835 of 25 August 2000 of the Agricultural Product Standards Act (No. 119 of 1990) sets strict rules for the grading, packing and marking of honey and mixtures of bee products sold in South Africa. These rules are intended to protect consumers from being misled and to protect South Africa’s bee farmers from unfair competition.
Incorrectly labelled adulterated honey often contains added substances like honeydew, glucose, dextrose, molasses, sugar, sugar syrup, inverted sugar or similar products. These cheaper sweeteners dilute the pure honey.
Such products may not contain the word honey on their front labelling. Even if the product contains some honey, the word honey may then only appear in its list of ingredients and with the proportion of honey contained also indicated.
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Tumi Mobu, a bee farmer in Gauteng and chairperson of SABIO, welcomes these renewed inspections and confiscations.
She explains that the seemingly uncontrolled influx of incorrectly labelled adulterated honey products has long been a major problem for South Africa’s bee industry.
“It’s caused many aspiring and developing commercial beekeepers to give up because they cannot compete with these much cheaper products. Yet this shouldn’t be the case, because there is opportunity to significantly increase South Africa’s honey production. We just need the playing field to be levelled.”
Mobu adds that although the Department of Agriculture’s renewed inspections and confiscations “are a good start”, they need to be consistently maintained countrywide, otherwise the incorrectly labelled adulterated products will reappear in shops.
SABIO would also like to see the importers and sellers of incorrectly labelled adulterated honey products face consequences that are sufficiently punitive to deter the resumption of imports and sales of such products.
“The government should then allocate some of the income from fines and import duties towards developing and supporting the South African bee industry. Beekeeping is and can be a valuable livelihood for South African families.”
Also read: Bees add billions to South Africa’s crop value
