Citizens! Do You Know the Source of Your Honey?
21st December 2011
Chinese honey, once ubiquitous, was largely shut out of the American market through anti-dumping measures. So, this article from NPR.org alleges, it started to be sold through a third country (perhaps Indonesia, Thailand, or Malaysia) and was falsely labelled to evade the duties. (Apparently we know this because the honey can be tested for peculiar types of pollen.) The U.S. government wasn’t having any of thatof course, and so they held up suspicious shipments through regulations, inspections, and documentary requirements. So now the Chinese honey is allegedly being sold through India.
The domestic honey industry is now starting to worry that all of this nefarious, subversive honey-related activity will suppress the market for all types of honey, including their own, and are starting a fair trade-esque system called True Source Honey, which will trace the honey to a proper, ‘merican source. None of that Chinese muck.
Like many other ‘progressive’ scare-words, ‘dumping’ is just a noise meaning ‘foreigners selling stuff for less than American producers want to sell it while keeping their previously fat profit.’ No consideration, of course, for those actually buying the honey, because they don’t have trade associations with expensive lobbyists to look after their interests. (You might think that, you know, elected representatives were there to look out for consumers, but that’s wrong, wrong, wrong; they only look out for the fictional consumers that ‘consumer advocacy’ groups tell them about.)