Who's Your Honey?

Actually, the question is "From where is your honey?"  Jessica sent me a link to an interesting story about attempts to determine the origin of honey imported into the U.S.  http://tamunews.tamu.edu/2010/04/29/scientist-tracks-origins-of-bootleg-honey-from-china/
Apparently, China has been "dumping" honey into U.S. markets at prices well below what honey producers in this country can match.  China is the world's largest producer of honey.  To try to help our producers, a tariff was established to make local honey more competitive.  However, it appears that honey that seemingly comes from other southeast Asian countries, according to the labels, actually has been routed from China.  How do we know this?  A scientist at Texas A&M studies the pollen in honey from around the world and therefore is able to make a good determination of the origin of a given quantity of honey.
This is something that should concern all honey producers in the United States.  As we are working towards more accurate, valid and honest labeling of our food products, we need to add honey to the list of items that require "truth in labelling," according to the professor.  He also advocates disallowing honey that has been filtered to remove identifiable pollen grains.