Food standards agency bans Chinese honey

UK Food Standards Agency Press Release, 19 February 2002

All jars of Chinese and blended honey (unless shown not to be of Chinese origin) should be withdrawn from Sale, says the UK Food Standards Agency. The call comes in the wake of tests that revealed traces of the antibiotic chloramphenicol in some jars of Chinese and blended honey.

The Agency began the tests on honey because of concerns about a lack of controls on the use of veterinary drugs in China. In the latest results, illegal residues of chloramphenicol were found in ten out of 16 samples. In the EU it is illegal to use chloramphenicol on animals where they, or their products, are destined for human consumption.

A meeting of independent scientific experts, convened by the Agency to assess whether the residues pose a risk to consumers, concluded that the levels found pose an extremely small risk. The main known risk from chloramphenicol relates to aplastic anaemia, a rare but serious blood disorder that affects 50 to 100 people a year in the UK. Chloramphenicol may also be linked to cancer.

The Agency advises that, because of the extremely small risk, people can continue to eat honey they have already bought, regardless of the country of origin. This advice also applies to foods that contain honey, where the risk is even lower.

The APIMONDIA Symposium

Prevention of residues in honey will be held in Celle, Germany in October 2002 (details in Look Ahead page 11).

STOP PRESS!

Tanzania has been successful in its application for reinstatement to the list of countries authorised to import honey into the EU following the ban imposed in February 2001 ( reported in BfD 59)