Panel discussion over the eluru illness.
News Nivit Yadav, Programme Director CSE panel discussion over the eluru illness.
News Nivit Yadav, Programme Director CSE panel discussion over the eluru illness.
The report on the adulteration of honey, brought out by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), has opened up a Pandora's box. What began as an investigation into alleged malpractices by domestic manufacturers has escalated into a full-blown battle between two prominent players in the category: Marico and Dabur. Marico made the first move, saying that Dabur's claim that its honey passed the German NMR test was misleading. The complaint, made to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) on Thursday, was after Dabur released ads in national dailies in response to the CSE report on Wednesday where it was named for failing a foreign adulteration test. Dabur hit back, saying Marico's Saffola honey sample from the marketplace had failed the NMR test, prompting it to approach ASCI for misleading claims made by the latter. (NMR, or Nuclear Magnetic Resonance test, is an advanced test to detect adulteration in honey.) "We will continue to contest the matter in ASCI," Sanjay Mishra, chief operating officer, India sales and chief executive officer, new business, Marico, said. "If there is a threat to our reputation and any disparaging statement made, then we will decide on our future course of action. As of now, I can confirm that nothing has come from ASCI to us regarding the complaint they (Dabur) claim to have filed. According to ASCI protocol, an advertiser has to be informed within 24 hours of a complaint filed against it; that has not happened so far," he added. Brand experts say this is more than an advertising war. "The issue goes much beyond an ad war because it deals with people's health," says N Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research, Mumbai-based brand advisory firm. "What goes into your food is a sensitive issue. I am of the view that the food regulator of the country must look into this matter closely," he said. This point is endorsed by Bejon Mishra, a consumer affairs expert, who was earlier a member of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). "Brands may say whatever they have to in defence of their products. But who should the common man believe? I'm of the view that the FSSAI should conduct an unbiased study of all brands to put things in perspective. This will go a long way in reposing faith in the category, " Bejon Mishra said. The FSSAI has already sought more details from CSE on honey adulteration, which it says has been provided to the regulator. While the FSSAI steps in to take stock of the situation, the war between Marico and Dabur is reminiscent of the bitter battle fought in the past in categories such as health drinks (Horlicks versus Complan), detergents (Rin versus Ariel) and hygiene (Dettol versus Lifebuoy). More recently, fairness creams saw battles between Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and Emami over trademark infringement. But then categories with two strong incumbents lend themselves to such brand wars. "In Horlicks versus Complan, the fight was over who was more efficacious as a health drink. In Dettol versus Lifebuoy, the issue was about germ protection and in detergents, the point of contention was who was whiter, " said K V Sridhar, global chief creative officer, Nihilent Hypercollective. In the honey category, purity is the point of battle, something that both Marico and Dabur say is in their favour. "Dabur has cleared all the above FSSAI-mandated tests, including SMR (specific marker for rice syrup) test, besides voluntarily conducting NMR test periodically to ensure that our consumers get 100 per cent pure honey with no added sugar/syrups or any other adulterants, " a company spokesperson said.
For the past year, Aseem Hattangadi, a home chef in Mumbai, has been buying honey from friends who aggregate it from a single, ‘clean’ source. The latter, coupled with tastings in places like Dubai, made him realise that brand is no longer important to him as long as the source is good, clean and preservative-free, and his purchase supports local producers. Last week, he realised the wisdom of his choice after reading a Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report that alleged adulteration of honey with rice syrup. The CSE report has literally stirred the beehive. Out of samples of 13 brands, 10 allegedly contained traces of rice syrup and failed the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) test, which checks for adulteration and confirms the origin of honey. These two tests are not currently part of the parameters set by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). While the NMR test is not required by the Indian law for honey sold locally, it is necessary for export, according to a report in The Hindu. The CSE team alleges that honey is being adulterated with sugar syrups imported from China, now also manufactured in India. “The sugar syrups are sold on portals like Alibaba with names such as rice fructose syrup, tapioca fructose syrup, golden syrup fructose syrup, and more,” explains Sonal Dhingra, deputy programme manager, food safety and toxins, CSE. “These claim to pass all the adulteration tests: C4, C3, foreign oligosaccharides, SMR and TMR. And these are being imported under the HS (harmonised system) code of fructose or glucose.” These are also manufactured in India as “all pass syrup”. The past few days have seen a series of responses and refutations by various brands. FSSAI, while taking note of the study, has asked why its prescribed tests, such as the “more sensitive” Specific Marker for Rice syrup (SMR), were not conducted on the samples. All this begs the question: what is pure honey and what goes, or should not go, into it? “Everyone knows it is impossible to produce thousands of bottles of pure honey, with each one tasting the same. Agro climate leads to changes in the taste of honey, if it is all natural. To get uniform-tasting honey means some kind of manipulation has been done,” says Stan Thekaekara, a social entrepreneur associated with Just Change India, a producer company, incorporated in 2004, which aims to create an alternative economic structure based on a direct community-to-community model. Just Change has been working with the Kattunayakans, traditional honey foragers in the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, who scale 60-feet trees and cliffs yawning into deep gorges. It is part of the Adivasi Munnetra Sangam (AMS), a membership-based tribal organisation comprising 4,000 families. Gaurav Ladwal of the Ladwal Foundation, which works with Kumaon Organics in Uttarakhand, concurs that natural honey won’t taste the same across batches. He has known brands to mix 10 to 15 different kinds of honey, made of invert and artificial sugar instead of flower nectar, aggregated from across the country. These are then boiled together till the good bacteria is destroyed “and at the end all you are left with is sugar”. “The honey market is a bit murky and it is something everyone has known for a long time,” says Rohan Rehani, founder of Moonshine Meadery, which offers Moonshine Honey. He started the brand as a passion project while looking for honey to make mead and realised that the quality of commercial honey was simply not good. So, in 2016, Rehani enrolled at the Central Bee Research and Training Institute of India to learn beekeeping. He started the Moonshine Honey Project last year to work directly with beekeepers and build the brand’s own supply chain, encourage small farmers to become part-time beekeepers to supplement income, and to educate the consumer about good quality honey. Moonshine has now hired a full-time beekeeper, who goes from state to state, wherever flowering season is taking place. Today, a Moonshine honey bottle even contains the exact coordinates of where the bee boxes have been kept. “We have started with a small batch of 500 bottles to test the market," he says. "Since the feedback on our honey has been great, we're planning to scale up multifold the number of bee boxes we deploy in the field." And the extra honey will be going into Moonshine's mead making processes. In the case of natural honey, the flower has a huge impact on the taste, colour and viscosity, and this varies from season to season. Kumaon Organics has a variety which is made when a particular bee feeds on wild jamun grown in the Himalayas.
Bottles of honey collected from the Sunderbans mangroves and packaged by villagers, who faced the double blow of the pandemic-induced lockdown and Cyclone Amphan, are finding more takers from across the country. The sale of brand Bonphool, has jumped after a study, led by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, found that honey sold by major brands in India was “adulterated with addition of sugar syrup”, said a forest official. The honey-production programme, started by the state forest department, the panchayats and the rural development department in collaboration with WWF India as a means to generate alternative livelihood for villagers, who venture deep into tiger territory to collect honey or catch fishes and crabs, is barely a year old. On Monday, stocks of Bonphool were sold out on a popular online shopping platform. And the three cooperatives, set up jointly by the forest department, the panchayats and the rural development department and WWF India to produce honey from bee boxes, are working overtime to meet the demand that they had never seen before, the forest official said. Honey collectors have been going inside the forest despite the risks of getting mauled by tigers since ages. In fact, there is a popular saying: “Modhu khoja mane bagh khoja” (finding honey equates finding a tiger). According to forest department figures, at least five to six of these honey collectors (official figures) are killed by tigers every year. Bonphool sold 2,500 bottles per day on an average after the report was published last week, a forester said. As the demand soars, senior foresters are brainstorming to find out how to churn out more bottles and reduce time taken to pack each one before they are handed to the couriers for delivery across the country. The honey has had thousands of takers and has the likes of writer Javed Akhtar among its admirers. The demand for the honey started going up after a section of foresters started tweeting about the brand while focussing on the fact that they are collected from the mangroves of the Sunderbans. The programme was started by Santosha G.R., who was serving as the divisional forest officer of the South 24-Parganas, and a senior official of the panchayat and rural development department of the state government. The forest department had given 20 boxes each to 72 traditional honey collector families, who are called maulis in Bengali. It had also helped them to form three cooperative societies in the Jharkhali, Kultali, Nalgora areas and helped them secure soft loans from the state co-operative bank. The villagers have been trained in bee-keeping by experts from the Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Nimpith. Soumyajit Das, the special secretary of the panchayat and rural development department, said their sales counter on the ground floor of their office on Salt Lake was witnessing a steady stream of customers. “The response is overwhelming,” said Das. The department is setting up an app where orders can be placed. The forest department too has started a dedicated webpage for taking orders and residents of Calcutta can get theirs home delivered for free.
NEW DELHI: The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on Tuesday rebutted the Chinese company Wuhu Deli Foods's statement which denied having knowledge that their transaction had to do anything with adulterating honey with sugar syrup. In a statement, China-based Wuhu Deli has categorically denied that it knew the said syrups being solicited by the CSE investigators were to bypass the tests to prove the authenticity of honey in India. Its statement also mentions that the company believed the transaction had only to do with syrup, and nothing to do with honey. The CSE, in a statement, rebutted the claim, and said it is a fact that Wuhu Deli sent it a shipment of samples that contained syrup with the intention of helping it to bypass the honey testing protocols in India. "It is a fact that Wuhu Deli sent us a shipment of samples that contained syrup with the intention of helping us to bypass the honey testing protocols in India. It is unfortunate that because CSE is not a food importer, it did not have requisite clearances to import food products and had to cancel the shipment from Wuhu Deli. If we manage to get possession of this shipment, we will be happy to get its contents tested," the CSE said. Wuhu Deli was one of the companies that were contacted by investigators from CSE posing as a fictitious honey trading firm trying to find out if Chinese sugar and rice syrup could be brought into India and mixed with Indian honey, and whether this syrup-spiked honey would pass the Indian testing standards. CSE said that its investigators wrote to Wuhu Deli seeking syrups that could bypass the honey specifications as mandated by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSAAI). "We clearly wrote asking for syrups that could pass C3, C4 tests, including those for SMR, TMR, and foreign oligosaccharides," says CSE. "These testing parameters that CSE researchers mentioned in the email to Wuhu Deli are to specifically test the authenticity of honey in India and not meant for that of sugar syrups or rice syrups (which Wuhu Deli alleges it thought it was dealing in). In fact, Wuhu Deli's response to CSE's request says -- in clear terms -- that its high fructose syrup could pass all these tests. Not just that, it also quoted prices for 10 container loads (200 tonnes) of this syrup that could bypass the above testing parameters for honey authenticity in India," the CSE said in its statement. The environment watchdog further said that it is common knowledge that Chinese companies have expertise in syrups, which when adulterated in honey can pass the Indian testing parameters. There are numerous sellers on online marketplaces like Alibaba who advertise this. Wuhu Deli is one such advertiser and has been rated by Alibaba as a 'gold supplier', it said.
Days after the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a not-for-profit public interest research and advocacy organisation, alleged that major brands, including Dabur, Patanjali and Himalaya, sell adulterated honey by mixing a special sugar syrup, The Morning Standard spoke to Delhi-NCR residents to know how they felt after knowing the truth. Preeti Singh, 45, Homemaker, Sukhdev Vihar I have been using Patanjali’s honey and have consumed 1kg since the pandemic began. I use it in my face packs, for cold and cough, and in shakes and food items. I am not shocked by the news as I was aware of these malpractices, but being away from my hometown I was unable to fetch honey from the farms. The one I use gets frozen when I keep it in the fridge and this is not the original property of honey. Monica Aaron, 58, Retired Teacher, Gurugram We have been a Dabur honey customer for a long time. Each family member’s daily consumption is one-two teaspoons. But the recent reports have been shocking as we don’t know what is fit to be consumed. We trusted Dabur, but now it will be difficult to trust big brands in the market. Ruhee Parvez, 33, Journalist, East Delhi I have been consuming Dabur and Patanjali honey all this while and had bought 500gm packing thrice. I normally add honey to my bowl of cornflakes. I assumed it to be healthier than sugar but I was wrong. So recently, I purchased a bottle of organic honey called Satvyk. Rajesh Kesari, 50, Physician and Diabetologist, Noida My family generally consumes a lot of honey. There are a lot of brands that claim that their honey is pure, has been gathered from the Himalayas, and is organic. But this revelation about the samples failing tests has left us feeling cheated. Many diabetics take honey instead of sugar, thinking it is safe for them. It is true that honey contain lesser amount of calories than table sugar, but these companies have dealt a blow to such unassuming patients by causing a further increase in their blood sugar levels. I strongly feel that the authorities should take strict actions against such manufacturers and not let them fool the public. Rinkoo Tulsian Shroff, 44, Fashion Designer, Delhi I have been consuming organic honey. My friends have a farm and they send it across. We consumed almost 2kg during the pandemic, as honey acts as an immunity booster. But only a few people know who is selling genuine stuff, the rest of the customer base is driven by the advertisements. I wish those who are selling the real products get to promote themselves. We can also use jaggery instead of sugar and even grow stevia in the garden. Vinod Kumar Julka, 65, Mayur Vihar Earlier, we used to buy Dabur, and then also started buying Patanjali. It’s our daily routine to drink lemon water with honey in the morning. But the latest report made us realise that we can’t trust the big brands. I have got to know that the beekeepers in Sunderbans don’t even get the right price for their honey. The government should promote local honey producers. I will also look for a local source of honey in villages through my contacts, and discontinue buying these brands.
Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands Dabur and Marico are on the warpath over each other’s claims about their honey brands, taking their dispute to the advertising industry watchdog, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). It all started when Marico filed a complaint on October 1 before the ASCI, against the ‘NMR tested pure honey’ claim by Dabur for its product Dabur Honey. The claim “NMR tested” was considered false by the council and misleading by implication and omission and upheld under Chapter 1.4 of the ASCI Code. Apart from that, Marico again filed a complaint before ASCI on December 3, challenging the claim made by ‘Dabur India Ltd.’ that “Dabur Honey had passed the German NMR test”. The complaint has been admitted by ASCI and taken on record for further hearing. Dabur said in a statement that Marico’s claim on the NMR test was misleading the consumers. On December 7, Dabur filed a complaint in ASCI against Marico after their Saffola Honey sample from the market failed the NMR test conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). Dabur claimed that the test reports clearly indicated the presence of sugar syrup in Saffola honey. However, Marico dismissed Dabur's claim, contending that "Saffola Honey is compliant with each quality parameter mandated by FSSAI". According to the ASCI process, the advertisers are required to modify their claims or withdraw the advertisements. Their silent war intensified after the Centre for Science and Environment on December 2 reported about adulteration in honey sold by major brands in the country. The CSE said any claim by these companies of meeting all Indian standards "holds limited value" and was "jugglery" of language. Sunita Narain, Director General, CSE, emphasised that their investigations had revealed that the honey adulteration business was sophisticated and was designed to bypass the purity and quality standards laid down by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). When FSSAI asked CSE about an existing database for Indian honey for effective screening for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR) tests, CSE explained that it had sent the samples for NMR tests to a top food testing laboratory based in Germany, which has the expertise and necessary database for NMR screening. FSSAI officials asked about the specific names under which the adulterants were being imported into India.
The Federal Government has set a 2030 target for the improvement of the nation’s poor sanitation and ending open defecation by providing adequate toilet and water facilities. Minister of Environment, Dr. Mohammad Abubakar, disclosed this in Abuja at this years’ World Toilet Day, themed: ‘Sustainable Sanitation and Climate Change’ in Abuja He stressed that government’s attention has been drawn to the fact that climate change is getting worse. The minister explained that seven years ago, the United Nations raised the alarm that billions of people are living without access to safely managed sanitation. The threat, he said, underscores the necessity for global technological sound structures to be put in place for containment, collection and treatment of human waste for proper waste management and sanitary hygiene practices in the country. According to him, the commemoration presents an opportunity to bring to the front burner, the challenges of poor sanitation, open defecation and how climate change is threatening the sanitary system with associated health consequences. “Today, about 4.2 billion people of the world live without safe toilets and about 47 million Nigerians are still practicing open defecation, hence many people still use the bush, and water bodies as their regular means for excreta disposal”, he said. Abubakar further disclosed the ministry has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Centre for Science and Environment on technology transfer, technical assistance, capacity building, and research on water, sanitation, and environmental management. The Minister of State for Environment, Mrs. Sharon Ikeazor, explained that sustainable sanitation begins with a toilet that effectively captures human waste in a safe, accessible and dignified setting. “The waste then gets stored in tanks, the next stage is treatment and safe disposal,” she added. She also noted that climate change is now threatening the sanitation system with associated health and environmental consequences, adding that everyone must have clean water and hand washing facilities to help protect and maintain our health securely. A representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr. Edwin Isoto-Edeh, said water, sanitation and open defecation in Nigeria was not encouraging, pointing out that there are more rooms for improvement to meet with the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030.
News Marico, Dabur lock horns post CSE report. Dabur file counter complaint against Marico.
News Marico, Dabur lock horns post CSE report. Dabur file counter complaint against Marico.
Honey is popular as an immunity booster, especially in winters, but can the purity scandal affect how consumers view the product? Will it still find takers? 2020 has been the year of sanitisers and immunity boosters. To fight the spread of the Coronavirus, Indians invested in taking multivitamins, exercising and following Ayurvedic practices to boost immunity – such as drinking lemon and honey tea. However, honey has recently come under the scanner. Major honey brands such as Dabur, Patanjali and Emami (Zandu Pure Honey) came under the scanner for having failed a purity test conducted by a German laboratory, said the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based public interest research and advocacy organisation, earlier this month (December). Out of the 13 honey brands that were tested, Marico’s Saffola Honey was the only big brand to pass all the tests. Sanjay Mishra, chief operating officer, India sales, and CEO, new business, Marico, said in an e-mailed statement that every batch of Saffola Honey is tested using NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) technology. It is one of the most advanced tests in the world, in the best in class laboratories, to ensure that it is 100 per cent pure, free from added sugar and any form of adulteration. “Saffola Honey is also compliant with each of the quality parameters mandated by the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India). Since its launch in June this year, it has been widely accepted by consumers and appreciated by the trade for delivering on its promise of quality and purity. We will continue to communicate these attributes of Saffola Honey to our discerning consumers through our TVCs, digital media, advertisements on e-commerce platforms and our own DTC channel,” said Mishra. The NMR test is administered across the world to test honey for its purity. While the test is not a norm in India, it is mandatory for honey meant for export. During its investigation, the CSE tracked down Chinese trade portals, like Alibaba, which were advertising fructose syrup that can bypass tests. Amit Khurana, programme director of CSE’s food safety and toxins team, remarked, “It remains unclear how much does the food regulator really knows about this murky business.” In August, Saffola Honey had released its first ad, where it touted its purity and mentioned that it was tested using NMR, and was “free from any form of adulteration and with no added sugar.” It was also the first ad we (afaqs!) saw where a scientist in a lab coat examines honey's purity under a microscope.
The CSE study on contamination in honey is a wake-up call for a sector with potential A study of samples of select Indian brands of honey prima facie suggests that they are liberally adulterated with cheap sugar syrup, imported from China. The Centre of Science and Environment, which had tested the 13 honey samples using the German technique, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, claims that these very samples seemed fine after an analysis by a premier NDDB facility. Food regulator FSSAI has raised some questions over the tests, while the firms have denied these claims. The controversy raises quality concerns over a product that is widely used as an immunity booster and prophylactic, more so in the context of Covid-19. The process of beekeeping, from the farm to the processing stage, needs to be reformed, if India is serious about expanding the consumption and export of honey. Efforts to boost honey output through the ‘Sweet Kranti’ mission introduced in May 2017, are laudable. According to a June 2019 report on beekeeping by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, around four lakh people are involved in beekeeping, producing “90 to 95 thousand tonnes of honey” every year from 34 lakh bee colonies; the rest being harvested from rock bee colonies in open spaces. An entomological study points out that “Approximately 73 per cent of the world’s cultivated crops are pollinated by bees, 19 per cent by flies, 6.5 per cent by bats, 5 per cent by wasps, 5 per cent by beetles, 4 per cent by birds, and 4 per cent by butterflies and moths”. The EAC report says that oilseeds, orchard crops, legumes and vegetables benefit from apiculture, increasing crop yield to the “extent of 20- 80 per cent in most cultivated crops”. But India, with the second largest arable land area, can produce many times its existing output, and employ 21.5 million people from the poorer sections of the rural population, the report observes. Can growth in GST collections move into double-digits? Analysis of trends in tax collections of Centre and States shows that indirect tax collections were slowing even prior to 2017. . Unless the leakages are plugged, growth in GST is not expected to pick up Analysis of trends in tax collections of Centre and States shows that indirect tax collections were slowing even prior to 2017. . Unless the leakages are plugged, growth in GST is not expected to pick up While honey production has increased, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, from 51,000 tonnes in 2006-07 to 115,000 tonnes in 2018-19, India ranks eighth in the world (China being No 1) and fifth as an exporter. It, however, exports about half its output, fetching about ₹7,000 crore annually. In its potential to support incomes with low initial investment (10 bee boxes per beneficiary, each costing about ₹5,000, can yield an annual income of ₹30,000) apiculture is unique. All the more reason, then, to ensure that standards are maintained. Bees are contaminated not only by the use of sugar syrup in processing but also through pesticide and antibiotics use. The use of antibiotics such as terramycin and oxytetracycline to deal with bee-related disease has raised questions in European markets where residue standards are stringent. India must raise its bar on testing, apply the best technologies, and integrate beekeeping with organic farming initiatives, which will bolster the economic viability of the latter
Controversy And The Demise Of MDH's Dharampal Gulati The week that went by had a mix of good and bad news. Read this weekly wrap to get hold of the top stories in the FMCG industry: The week that went by witnessed a mix of both good and bad news within the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) space. Among the good news, the initial public offering of Burger King, one of the fastest growing quick-service restaurant chains in India with 268 outlets turned out to be the third issue in the calendar year 2020 to cross the subscription mark of 150 times. The IPO was open from Dec 2-4. Burger King IPO At 156.6 times, Burger King has received the second-highest subscription in the current year after Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders. Burger King India targets to open 700 restaurants by December 2026. The Rs 810-crore IPO was subscribed 156.6 times overall during December 2-4 as it received bids for 1,166 crore equity shares against an offer size of 7.44 crore equity shares (excluding anchor book portion). The strong interest in the issue was owing to attractive valuations, strong brand positioning, healthy financial prospects, expected robust store expansion plans of the quick-service restaurant industry in India. The state-owned defence company, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders' Rs 443-crore IPO had seen the highest subscription in 2020 at 157.4 times. The issue opened during September 29-October 1. The third IPO that received a strong subscription was Happiest Minds Technologies, the digital transformation IT consulting & services company founded by Ashok Soota in 2011. The 700-crore public issue witnessed 150.98 times subscription during September 7-9. Burger King was the fourteenth IPO this year and more than Rs 30,000 crore has been raised by fourteen companies through IPOs. Honey Adulteration Controversy Within not so good news in the FMCG industry was the honey adulteration controversy that surfaced last week. A new study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), indicated that honey, which is a natural product from bees, is mixed with sugar syrup acquired from rice, corn, beetroot, and sugarcane and sold as pure honey. The CSE food researchers took 13 bigger and smaller brands of processed and raw honey that are sold in India to check their purity. The study found that 77 percent of the honey samples were adulterated with sugar syrup. Only 3 out of the 13 brands Marico’s Saffola, MarkfedSohna and Nature's Nectar (one out of two samples) -- passed all the tests. Brands that failed the purity test for honey include Dabur, Patanjali, Baidyanath, Zandu, Hitkari and Apis Himalaya. Dabur and Patanjali have refuted the findings of a a study that said the honey sold by the companies is adulterated with sugar syrup. The companies said they have fully adhered to the norms on testing honey set by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). Emami which sells honey under the brand Zandu said that its Zandu Pure Honey conforms and adheres to all the protocols and quality norms/standards laid down by the Government of India and its authorised entities such as FSSAI. Lost A Legend Mahashay Dharampal Gulati, the owner, and face of masala brand MDH Spices passed away on December 3. He was 97 years old. Gulati was undergoing treatment at a hospital in New Delhi where he suffered a cardiac arrest on December 3 morning. Gulati was born in Sialkot in undivided India on March 27, 1923 and later migrated to India after the partition. He dropped out of school and set up a small business in 1937 with the help of his father Mahashay Chunni Lal Gulati, before joining the family business of spices. Often referred to as the 'King of Spices', Gulati appeared in several advertisements of MDH products. But he was also known for his work towards improving the quality of education and was associated with a number of educational institutions. In 2019, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award
The story so far: The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) last week released results of an investigation it had conducted into the quality of honey being produced in India. It reported that products by many popular brands were not honey, and, in fact, had been spiked with added sugar. Therefore, they ought not to be branded and sold as honey. The CSE also showed that adulteration technology had become sophisticated and there were commercial products available which are designed to cheat the tests that Indian food testing laboratories conduct to ascertain the purity of honey. Is there anything called ‘pure honey’? Over millennia, ‘honey’ was what bees made from plant nectar and people only just squeezed out the contents of honey combs, scrubbed it clean of bees, pollen and other visible residues. This is honey that is either sourced from wild bees or domesticated bees in apiaries. However, none of this constitutes ‘pure honey’, because it is a marketing term and a superficial phrase that masks the complexity that is ‘honey’. India’s food regulator, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), in July published a new set of regulations — the third in three years — called the ‘Revised Standards of Honey’. Nowhere does one find the term ‘pure honey’ in it. However, given that the adulteration of honey with added sugar is a global problem, the regulations listed the chemical contents, i.e., tolerable limits of ‘impurities’ that must be detected by specific tests for a batch of honey presented by a company for labelling to earn the right to market its product as honey. ‘Honey’ is then classified as either ‘Blossom’ or ‘Nectar Honey’, which is what comes from nectar of plants, or ‘Honeydew’, which comes mainly from excretions of plant-sucking insects (Hemiptera) on the living parts of plants. The honey that is ultimately made available can be a combination of these and can differ widely in ‘honey profiles’. There are at least 300 recognised types of honey. How is honey tested? Honey is primarily a complex of the fructose, glucose and sucrose sugars. It has a relatively high fructose content, which is why it is sweeter than commercial sugar, which is heavier on sucrose. The latter also breaks down less easily. Laboratory tests determine acceptable ratios of these sugars and tolerance limits. There is also a tolerance for ‘ash’ content and HMF (hydroxymethylfurfural), which forms when honey is heated. HMF is actually toxic for bees. The reason a wide range of chemical variety is allowed is because different flowers have varying characteristics of nectar and express different chemical compounds that are sensitive to light, temperature and geography. Therefore, it is possible to have raw honey that may be less sweet or high on sucrose, or is lighter or darker. Researchers in New Zealand have reported that raw honey from the manuka tree, which is believed to have medicinal qualities, is known to fail a standard test called the C4 test. Then, there are minimal levels of pollen count and foreign oligosaccharides that a quantity of honey must have. All of these have a broad tolerance range and are also influenced by the laboratory tests employed to detect them. Apiaries are known to feed beehives with sugar (sucrose) to stimulate production, and this, too, can influence the honey profile. But whether this makes the honey ‘raw’ is an open question. In all, there are 18 parameters for a product to be certified as honey. The most common are the so-called C4 and C3 tests, that determine if sugar from corn, sugarcane or rice was used to adulterate honey. Why does spiked honey matter? Honey typifies ‘natural sweetness’. The enzymes that bees use to make honey out of plant nectar render it rich in antioxidants, amino acids and other products that give honey its medicinal properties. This is why honey is part of traditional medicine and has been promoted as an immune system stimulant, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The addition of artificial sugar syrups reduces the concentration of these elements per gram of honey. As a sweetener, honey is digested more easily than sucrose-heavy sugars, but it spikes blood sugar levels the same way commercial sugar does. Therefore, responsibly sourced honey poses similar risks to diabetics as ordinary sugar. What did the CSE probe find? The CSE investigation examined 13 popular brands of honey. Four of them failed the tests that are required by Indian law—Apis Himalaya Honey, Dadev Honey, Hi Honey and Societe Naturelle Honey. The testing was done at the Centre for Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food, Gujarat. However, the CSE sent the samples to a lab in Germany that specialises in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This technology has evolved from taking MRIs of the brain and is increasingly being applied in food chemistry to unravel the chemical structure of food and detect the presence of additives more efficiently than routine, lab-based chemical tests. The NMR test is not mandatory in India, but it is necessary for export purposes. By this metric, ten of the 13 brands failed, with only three brands — Saffola Honey, Nature’s Nectar Honey and Markfed Sohna Honey passing. The NMR method relies on establishing a reference database of honey profiles — characteristics of sugar, pollen, oligosaccharides, pollen, etc.— from different geographic profiles. Major deviations from this are labelled suspect. The NMR investigation did not reveal what exactly was being used to spike the sugar syrup. These details were not revealed by CSE as it chose to keep the name of the testing lab secret. The CSE established that sugar syrups from China were availabe that could cheat the C4, C3 and oligosaccharides tests, but it is not known why exactly the ten brands failed the NMR test. Dabur claims that its own NMR tests in July done by Bruker labs Germany showed no spectroscopy anomalies.
With several big companies having failed the ‘honey purity’ test conducted by New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) through a laboratory in Germany, Punjab’s Cooperative Supply and Marketing Federation Limited, which is popularly known as Markfed, has been flooded with demand queries from local as well as overseas market for its honey that cleared the purity test. Markfed’s Sohna honey was among the brands that cleared the purity test among 13 brands tested. Markfed insiders said that the government agency managed to maintain quality standards thanks to SOPs like proper registration of farmers (beekeepers), providing them honey collecting buckets with unique bar-codes, preliminary testing, proper batching, and final testing before packing in its honey at processing plant. In the purity test it was found that all the major brands of India, which have big names in the honey market, were selling honey laced with modified sugar syrup. Markfed, which is one of the Asia’s largest marketing cooperative federation is in the field of honey’s marketing for the past two decades, has been procuring its honey directly from the farmers (beekeepers) and had set up a state-of-the-art honey processing plant in 2016 in Markfed Cannery, which had increased its production three-fold compared to its old unit. “We have been getting a lot of queries across India and from overseas about the supply of our product following the passing of the purity test by Markfed,” said Managing Director (MD) Markfed Varun Roojam, adding that our main focus is on the quality not the quantity and we are increasing the production too. “We have registered farmers from across the Punjab mainly from Kandi area (sub-mountainous range of Shivalik hills) in Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr, Ropar and Mohali areas and several other districts of the state and every record of these beekeepers is kept at the plant for quality purpose,” said MD Roojam, adding that even to collect the honey, Markfed provides unique bar-coding number buckets to the bee keepers to avoid any adulteration at the time of collection and then two preliminary tests are conducted before sealed honey in the buckets reaches processing plant so that adulteration, if any, can be tested at the beginning only and such honey can be stopped from reaching the plant. After processing, another in-house purity test is conducted, informed the MD. Earlier, Markfed had received SKOCH award, which is highest civilian award, in 2017 for introducing barcode technology for honey procurement. “I have been supplying 10 to 20 tonnes of honey to Markfed annually as per their demand since 2016 and its quality testing system is very appreciable as their staff come and take the sample of our collected honey in the buckets provided by them and buckets are sealed by them and after testing in the advanced laboratories we get the nod to supply those sealed buckets to the plant where we get the payment within 36 hours of our supply,” said farmers, Dharminder Singh (49) from Dharamgarh Village in Mohal District, adding that being a beekeeper he himself demands NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) test for honey so that only pure honey could be available in the market rather having these sugar laced syrups. Singh is in beekeeping occupation for the past 25 years and owns 600 boxes of bees which he keeps across the state, in Shivalik ranges, and outside the Himachal, Rajasthan as per availability of the flowers with the changing seasons. He also runs a group of 100 beekeepers who own 30,000 bee-boxes and supply honey to the exporters. He said that the best part of the Markfed is that there it not only maintains the quality but also a fair dealing takes place here with the farmers. “Farmers have an agreement with Markfed to supply the honey,” he said, adding that from single box 3 to 5 kg unprocessed honey is procured in a week to 10 days if the flowering season is on, but in the rainy season there is hardly any production for 3-4 months. Another beekeeper, Simarjeet Billa, who also supplies honey to Markfed, shared similar views. “We had 200 to 300 registered beekeepers and the honey plant has a capacity to process 300 tonnes of honey per day and currently around 60 metric tonnes of honey is being processed and sold annually by Markfed and the expansion is taking place gradually,” said Jaswinder Singh, Senior Marketing Manager, Markfed. He added that being a government body our main motive is not to make big profits but to supply pure eatables to the consumer. Apart from honey, Markfed Cannery plant is equipped to produce 66 lakh cans and 48 lakh pouches of ‘Ready to Eat’ food per annum. In addition, it has the capacity to produce 5.60 lakh cans of fruit in syrup and 18 lakh bottles of ketchup and jam every year. Likewise, the spices grinding line produces 11 lakh pouches of various spices every year. “Markfed products are globally popular. Around, 10 to 15 containers of the Sohna products per month and couple of millions of can of ‘saag’ are exported annually to developed nations such as the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Europe and Gulf countries,” said MD Roojam, adding that Markfed has engaged several 100 farmers to produce ‘sarson’ to make ‘sarson da saag’, basmati, wheat flour, jaggery (in this season) including organic products, and all these are very popular among Punjabis settled abroad. To meet the huge demand of Markfed Sohna products a large number of employed both men and women, who are specialists in cooking and selecting saag from the fields, are employed along with farmers who supply them raw material
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