Climate. China. And the Stinging State of American Honey
It’s been one of the wettest years so far in Tennessee. And if you were a humble honeybee there, you were probably staying dry in the hive rather than buzzing around outdoors, pollinating flowers and crops and collecting nectar to start that long process of making honey. You’re not being the most productive, but you’re also not going hungry, because your beekeeper has likely been giving you room service in order to keep you “from starving.” But your human is worried, not just about your survival, but also about the honey you ultimately produce, that it is valued fairly and not undercut by some of what experts call “fraudulent” and “cheap” honey from China. And to make matters worse, both of these problems that are worrying beekeepers, scholars recently argued, could have wide-ranging negative repercussions on America’s ecosystem and food security.
In other words, “the threat to pollination and subsequently to the ecosystem” and “the threat to the livelihood of honey producers via fraud” are intertwined, and they require more holistic solutions that address both problems, argued Michael Roberts, the founding executive director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, in a recent white paper on honey.
