Argentine Beekeepers' Magazine

(Espacio Apícola, May 2nd 2021) Ten days ago two associations of US beekeepers initiated a lawsuit for dumping against honey from Argentina. It caught our attention that among the causes for which they say they have lost sales opportunities and a significant drop in the price of honey, these two associations did not make any reference to the successive frauds that allowed the entry of suspicious honeys and directly sold syrups as honey to the United States, at a vile price, from Asia. Far from being the cause of any harm to the US beekeeping industry, we said, "the genuine honey producers we have been jointly and severally victims of this fraud".

Under the title "US beekeepers sue over imports of Asian fake honey" Alison Benjamin published in "The Guardian" a detailed report where US commercial beekeepers say: "counterfeit honey from Asia is forcing down prices and pushing them to financial collapse". The complaint was filed with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by Kelvin Adee (the largest commercial beekeeper in the US), Henry's Bullfrog Bees, based in Winters, California, and Golden Prairie, a non-profit organization of Kansas.

"They have accused the honey importers Sunland Trading and Lamex Food and the honey-packers Barkman Honey and Dutch Gold Honey of conspiring to defraud the US honey market, along with True Source Honey, an organisation set up by the importers and packers to operate a honey-certification scheme that the beekeepers claim passes off fake honey as genuine."

The Intertek laboratories and the auditors of the NSF certification scheme (which certify True Source Honey) was also involved in the complaint that counterfeit honey from Asia is forcing prices down and pushing them into financial collapse, almost as necessary participants.

Although the intervening organizations are different and autonomous, we hope that this news will challenge all the actors who promoted the lawsuit against Argentine and the other countries' honeys, looking first to wash the dirty clothes inside the house before blaming outsiders and dismissing at least the accusation against honey from Argentina.

Meanwhile in Argentina, on the seventh floor of Rivadavia street in Buenos Aires downtown, they were surprised and called one of the plaintiffs' associations against honey from Argentina to dialogue in a "diplomatic" note dated on April 26 but which was recently released this morning on the radio program of Federico Petrera.

For their side, most Argentine honey exporters agreed to answer the questionnaire sent by the International Trade Commission (ITC), which is due on Tuesday, May 5.

Full article in The Guardian

The SADA note