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"  A recent Food Safety News investigative report indicating that the U.S. honey supply may have harmful and illegal substances is cause for alarm for American consumers. This tainted honey, imported from Asian nations, including China, India, and Vietnam, is being rejected all over Europe and yet it&amp;#039;s being smuggled into the U.S. and landing on our supermarket shelves. In June 2010, the European countries began banning the harmful sweetener containing lead and illegal antibiotics used in animals. The U.S., however, did not ban the importation nor did they beef up screening measures. According to the article, &amp;quot;During [January to June] the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that almost 43 million pounds of honey entered the U.S. Of that, the Department of Commerce said 37.7 million pounds came from India, the same honey that is banned in the EU because it contained animal medicine and lead and lacked the proper paperwork to prove it didn&amp;#039;t come from China.&amp;quot; But exactly how much honey are we importing from Asia? Food Safety got the stats from Import Genius, a private shipping intelligence service. According to their database, &amp;quot;The U.S. imported 208 million pounds of honey over the past 18 months. Almost 60 percent of what was imported \u2014 123 million pounds \u2014 came from Asian countries \u2014 traditional laundering points for Chinese honey. This included 45 million pounds from India alone.&amp;quot; More From Delish: 13 Nutrition and Food Myths Busted This makes Richard Adee, the Washington Legislative Chairman of the American Honey Producers Association, extremely concerned. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re supposed to have the world&amp;#039;s safest food supply but we&amp;#039;re letting in boatloads of this adulterated honey that all these other countries know is contaminated and FDA does nothing,&amp;quot; he told Food Safety News. What&amp;#039;s even scarier? In 2001, an epidemic killed tens of millions of Chinese bee-keepers&amp;#039; colonies. &amp;quot;They fought the disease with several Indian-made animal antibiotics, including chloramphenicol. Medical researchers found that children given chloramphenicol as an antibiotic are susceptible to DNA damage and carcinogenicity. Soon after, the FDA banned its presence in food.&amp;quot; Honey, by the way, isn&amp;#039;t just in those cute little squeezeable bears. It&amp;#039;s used in many processed foods that you may have in your pantry, including cereals, baked goods, sauces, and even beverages. It&amp;#039;s believed that millions of pounds of honey are imported and then distributed to larger food suppliers and American packaged goods companies. More From Delish: Food Safety Quiz China is no stranger to tainted foods. In 2008, more than 300,000 children were sickened by milk powder laced with the deadly substance melamine, which was added by unscrupulous producers who claimed they were increasing the protein content. Quality control in China is a challenging problem for the U.S. government given their regulation issues. Moral of the story: try to get your honey from your local farmers&amp;#039; market when possible. And while we don&amp;#039;t want to stir up any pandemonium, you may want to see if your honey jar has note about its origin. If it&amp;#039;s India or China, you may just want to toss it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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