COLLEGE STATION, Texas – Vaughn Bryant peered through the eye piece of his microscope, making infinitesimally small adjustments on the position of the slide beneath the lens.

Prof. Vaughn Bryant runs the country's leading pollen/honey research lab. © photo by The Food Watchdog

“Nothing,” he said, and switched the slide for another.

“Again, nothing,” he said after about 40 seconds, and substituted another glass slide with a smudge in its center.

“OK. We’ve got clover. Some nice cherry, plum and rose.”

Moving the slide a bit, the professor of anthropology and director of Texas A&M’s palynology research laboratory added:

“I see some blackberry, a couple of birch. Looks like a good northwest collection.”

Bryant was not looking at the makings of a dessert or a salad. He was analyzing some of the more than 60 samples of honey that Food Safety News bought in grocery stores, at farmers markets and in big box, natural food and drug stores across the country.

Here’s a link to the whole story

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled “honey.”

More than 1,100 brands of honey sold in U.S. Most big packers remove all pollen and thus the ability for food safety investigators to track its origin. © The Food Watchdog

The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies.

The food safety divisions of the World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn’t honey. However, the FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.

Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey – some containing illegal antibiotics – on the U.S. market for years.

Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after its earlier investigation found U.S. groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin. (Mary pls add link: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/08/honey-laundering/

FSN purchased more than 60 jars, jugs and plastic bears of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

READ THE FULL RESULTS HERE: