Chris Ayres reports in the Times from Los Angeles:
As scientists race to investigate the sudden and inexplicable collapse of bee colonies in America and Europe, international smugglers are coming up with new and imaginative ways to get Winnie the Pooh’s favourite snack into breakfast cereals and onto supermarket shelves.
‘Honey laundering,’ the authorities call it.
As the name suggests, honey laundering involves disguising drums of the sticky stuff from China by selling it to a third party—usually a distributor in another part of the world—then re-packaging it and re-exporting it, so that its source remains unknown.
According to an investigation by the Seattle Post Intelligencer, several tons of Chinese honey have this year passed through ports in Tacoma, Washington, and Long Beach, California, after being fraudulently repackaged as the product of Russia.
