Honey Fraud & Labeling Standards

The Problem

The United States consumes approximately 600 million pounds of honey per year. Domestic production accounts for roughly 139 million pounds. The remaining 75% is imported - primarily from Argentina, India, Vietnam, Brazil, and Ukraine. The import dependence itself is not the problem. The problem is that a significant fraction of the imported product is not, by any reasonable standard, honey.

Honey adulteration takes several forms:

• Dilution with sugar syrups. Rice syrup, corn syrup, and industrial glucose are blended with genuine honey to stretch volume. Modern rice syrup is particularly difficult to detect because its isotopic signature can be engineered to mimic honey's natural C3/C4 sugar ratios.
• Ultra-filtration. Genuine honey is filtered at high pressure through diatomaceous earth or ceramic filters to remove all pollen grains. Without pollen, the geographic origin of the honey cannot be determined by standard melissopalynology (pollen analysis). Ultra-filtered honey from China can be relabeled as originating from any country.
• Transshipment. Chinese honey, subject to US anti-dumping duties averaging $2.63/kg since 2001, is shipped through third countries (Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, India) and relabeled as originating from those countries to evade duties. This practice, documented in multiple federal investigations, is sometimes called "honey laundering."
• Synthetic honey. Laboratory-produced sweeteners designed to pass basic testing as honey. These products may contain no bee-derived material whatsoever.

The Regulatory Vacuum

The FDA does not have a federal standard of identity for honey. This is remarkable. The FDA has standards of identity for maple syrup, orange juice, bread, cheese, and dozens of other common foods. Honey - one of the most adulterated food products on earth - has none.

Without a federal standard, there is no legal definition of what honey must contain, what processes it must or must not undergo, or what testing is required to verify its authenticity. Manufacturers and importers are subject to general food safety and labeling requirements, but these are insufficient to address the specific fraud mechanisms used in honey adulteration.

State-level standards exist in a patchwork: Florida, California, Wisconsin, and approximately 15 other states have adopted some form of honey standard, often based on the Codex Alimentarius international standard. But state standards cannot address imported honey that enters through federal ports of entry. And inconsistent state standards create a regulatory landscape that sophisticated fraudsters navigate with ease - shipping adulterated product to states with weaker or no standards.

The True Source Honey Initiative

The True Source Honey certification program, launched in 2010 by a coalition of US honey packers and importers, attempts to certify supply chain integrity - verifying that honey can be traced to its country of origin and has not been transshipped to evade duties. The program is voluntary. Participation is concentrated among the larger US honey packers. It addresses transshipment and origin fraud but does not directly address adulteration (a honey sample can be certified as genuinely from India but still be adulterated with rice syrup).

The Economic Impact

Honey fraud depresses the domestic honey price. When 500 million pounds of imports include a significant volume of adulterated or synthetic product priced below the cost of genuine honey production, the market price floor drops below what domestic beekeepers can sustain.

The USDA-reported average domestic honey price has fluctuated between $2.00 and $2.50 per pound (wholesale) in recent years. The cost of production for a commercial US beekeeper is estimated at $1.50 to $2.00 per pound, including labor, equipment, disease management, transportation, and colony replacement. Margins are thin. When imported product enters the market at $1.00 to $1.50 per pound - prices that are economically impossible for genuine honey from most origin countries - the domestic market is undercut.

The American Honey Producers Association and the American Beekeeping Federation have repeatedly petitioned the FDA for a standard of identity and have supported Congressional legislation to establish one. As of 2026, no federal standard has been adopted.

The Testing Challenge

Detecting sophisticated honey fraud requires advanced analytical chemistry. The major testing methods include:

• C4 sugar testing (AOAC Official Method). Detects adulteration with C4 plant sugars (corn syrup, cane sugar) using stable carbon isotope ratio analysis. Effective for basic corn syrup adulteration. Ineffective against C3 sugar adulterants (rice syrup, beet sugar) which have isotopic ratios similar to honey.
• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) profiling. Creates a chemical "fingerprint" of the honey sample and compares it against a database of known authentic honeys. The most comprehensive single test currently available. Used by several European laboratories and increasingly by US importers.
• Melissopalynology. Microscopic pollen analysis to verify geographic origin. If a honey sample labeled "Argentine clover honey" contains no Argentine clover pollen but does contain Chinese rapeseed pollen, the labeling is fraudulent. Ultra-filtration defeats this test by removing all pollen.
• LC-IRMS (Liquid Chromatography - Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry). Detects adulteration by analyzing the isotopic ratios of individual sugar molecules. More sensitive than bulk C4 testing. Can detect rice syrup adulteration in some cases.

No single test catches all forms of adulteration. Comprehensive fraud detection requires multiple analytical methods applied to each sample - a testing protocol that costs $100 to $500 per sample and is not routinely applied to imports.

Where The Apiary Project Stands

The Apiary Project's position on honey fraud centers on four policy priorities:

1. Federal standard of identity. The FDA should establish a legally enforceable definition of honey that specifies allowable composition, prohibits adulteration and ultra-filtration that removes pollen, and requires that products labeled as honey meet the standard. This is the foundational regulatory step without which enforcement is structurally impossible.
2. Mandatory origin labeling. All honey sold in the US should bear truthful, specific country-of-origin labeling. Blended honey from multiple countries should list all source countries. "Packed in" or "distributed by" labels that obscure origin should be prohibited for honey products.
3. Import testing requirements. Customs and Border Protection should implement routine NMR profiling and pollen analysis of imported honey shipments, with costs borne by importers. The current testing rate is insufficient to deter fraud.
4. Anti-dumping enforcement. Existing anti-dumping duties on Chinese honey should be vigorously enforced, with increased investigation of transshipment through third countries. Penalties for circumvention should be increased to levels that actually deter the practice.

Honey fraud is not a niche consumer protection issue. It's a market distortion that threatens the economic viability of domestic beekeeping - an industry that provides the pollination services underpinning roughly $20 billion in US agricultural production annually. When domestic beekeepers can't sell their honey at a sustainable price because the market is flooded with fraudulent imports, colony numbers decline, pollination capacity shrinks, and the agricultural economy absorbs the cost.

The comb honey market's resurgence - documented in our blog - is partly a consumer response to the fraud problem. A sealed comb cannot be adulterated. But the comb honey niche cannot replace the need for a functioning, trustworthy liquid honey market. That requires regulation. The regulation requires political will. The political will requires public awareness. This page exists to contribute to that awareness.