I learnt a lot about honey last week. And it was all thanks to the stellar work of Rob Brown, whose feature on the fraud claims swirling around the category went live on Friday. Months of research went into the piece, and it showed. It was nigh-on impossible to come away from it without a much better understanding of the UK honey industry and some of the recent controversies that have threatened to engulf it.

While bold claims of ‘fake honey on UK supermarket shelves’ might have grabbed the headlines, the main issue is rather more subtle. It has its roots in the fact the UK is a nation of honey monsters. We love the stuff. But we only actually produce 14% of the honey we consume, which is down to both geography and climate.

This means the UK is hugely reliant on imports to sate our Pooh Bear-esque desires, with 77% of the honey we import coming from China. This is where the issues begin. Many British honey producers, along with organisations like the Honey Authenticity Network UK, claim that much of the honey coming in from China does not meet the UK definition of honey.

Honey’s sticking point

For more detail on the UK’s honey rules and testing, please do read the feature, but in short, purists argue that some Chinese honey is bulked up with sugar syrup. On the other side, many honey experts – along with some big industry names – insist that no single test can definitively prove whether or not honey has been adulterated.

The second sticking point centres on how the honey is dehydrated. When honey is produced it must be dried to reduce the moisture content to 20% or less. Strictly speaking, this drying should take place in the hive, via the flapping of thousands of tiny wings. Cute. But in China it’s common practice for the honey to be extracted from the hive early and dried industrially. Not cute.

The arguments erupt over whether honey produced using the latter method can even be called honey at all. Emotions are running high. Tempers are flared. PRs are swearing at Grocer journalists down the phone.

But among all the jabs and counterpunches that make the feature such a good read, I detected subtle notes not of orange blossom, like a delicious honey, but of outdated attitudes.

Remember when your dad used to turn over your toys to see where they were made? If the answer was ‘China’ or ‘Taiwan’ he’d wrinkle his nose. Or even let out an audible groan accompanied by some combination of the words “cheap”, “rubbish”, “load of” and “crap”.

While the delivery has softened over the years, the underlying sentiment hasn’t entirely disappeared: that anything made in China is low‑quality. This persists despite the fact the country’s manufacturing capabilities have long rivalled the best in the world. Most iPhones – along with countless other highly intricate bits of tech – are made in China. So many of the people who cast doubt on Chinese-made products are doing so while regularly using them every day.

Made in China

This is the problem with unconscious bias – it is, by its very definition, unconscious. And those who question the quality of the honey produced in China may well apply the same standards to honey produced anywhere in the world. But to pretend that this ingrained element of the British psyche isn’t at play here on some level seems naive.

Part of the problem, of course, is honey’s somewhat exalted status. It’s not Nutella. It’s not even jam. We don’t like to think of it being produced in factories. And having people fighting to preserve its sanctity is no bad thing. But unfortunately the majority of consumers simply can’t afford a £7 jar of artisanal, home-grown honey.

Crucially, while there are unproven rumours that honey is being adulterated with sugar syrups made from rice and other crops, until the traditionalists demonstrate a way to create thoroughbred honey at far greater scale and at an affordable price point, they feel a little out of step here. There are plenty of things we want to discourage people from eating – honey feels relatively low down the list.

Would it be the ideal if all the honey we consumed in this country was produced by beekeepers with regional accents in hazy summer fields? Of course. In the absence of that idyll, and with our appetite for saccharification on the rise, do people need to get over their objections to Chinese honey? Currently, it really does feel that way.

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