Honey fraud is not a new phenomenon,

but there has been an increasing number of complaints

from European honey producers,

consumers, and consumer associations.

They reported distortion of competition

related to pricing as well as fraud affecting consumers,

who were sold sugar for the price of honey.

Their complaints were duly picked up,

including by the European Parliament

and national authorities,

who reported suspicions via our European IT systems

to exchange on potential investigations.

So what do we mean by honey fraud?

The most frequest kind of fraud

is the addition of sugar, in particular sugar syrup.

But fraud can also touch upon labelling

especially for origin, when labels claim the honey comes from the EU

but in fact it's from outside the EU.

Fraudulent companies

make important profits from this.

Our action targeted

the addition of sugar,

with specific methods to detect

this kind of fraud.

Our action plan was carried out in three phases.

In the first phase, samples of imported honey

were taken at border entry points.

About 320 samples were taken at EU borders

and sent to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC)

In the second phase, the samples were analysed

to identify and trace the importers or exporters.

In the third phase, on-site investigations

were carried out by national authorities

and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).

After the

opening of the containers in the port of Barcelona,

where we took some samples together with the Spanish customs,

we now are going to the

Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Geel, Belgium.

They received the sealed samples with honey, which are now over there

to be analysed to see if the samples are indeed

adulterated with sugar or if they are actually fine.

Honey and sugar syrups are chemically very, very similar,

so you need to involve rather sophisticated techniques

by which you carefully try to identify what we call biomarkers.

These biomarkers are present in sugar syrups but not in honey,

so their presence raises a suspicion,

meaning you will find an irregularity - you see a substance

that should not be in honey, and that indicates

that something has been done.

The technology that we have used is based on

separating out (with a separation technique)

those marker substances,

and we have identified them by using a sophisticated instrument

called nuclear magnetic resonance.

This nuclear magnetic resonance

creates a fingerprint of honey.

By comparing fingerprints of authentic honey

and honey that has been manipulated,

we were able to identify in certain cases

the manipulation.

Getting to the results,

we see that 46% of the

of the tested honey samples are suspected of adulteration.

To be very clear:

There is no danger to public health.

However, there are major economic stakes.

Sanctions have been taken

against operators who did not respect regulations,

batches have been withdrawn from the market,

and a call for order has been made to all operators

concerning their obligation to put products on the market

that are authentic and that respect EU rules.

National authorities have strengthened their controls,

both on the market and upon importation.

And finally, cooperation is developing with countries outside the EU

especially those where we identified the most suspicions of fraud,

to detect ahead of exporting

any suspicious operators who may try to send adulterated honey

into the European Union.