00:00Europe's best food safety experts are joining forces to crack down on fraud.
00:05Euronews is following them in this special series called The Food Detectives.
00:10In this episode, we're following the team fighting fake honey in Spain.
00:21Honey can only be made by bees.
00:24However, what's labelled as honey in the shops isn't always pure.
00:27In fact, it can contain all kinds of other illicit sugars, as beekeeping food detective Julio Fernández explains.
00:44The problem is widespread.
00:46One study found that nearly half of the honey imported into the EU had been mixed with other sugars.
00:52It makes us feel bad for farmers who love our profession.
00:56Because that type of honey makes us a bad competition in the market
01:00because they reach very cheap prices with which traditional agriculture can't compete.
01:04Food detective Armando Menendez from the EU's Watson project is working on a camera that can spot fake honey.
01:11The camera can also determine which plant nectar the bees consumed, which has an impact on its market value.
01:18It's an important tool against mislabeling.
01:20The tool will be able to identify, in real time, what type of botanical origin is the honey.
01:27The tool will be able to identify, in real time, what type of honey is the honey.
01:32And this can help to detect, first, errors and also help the producer to know what type of etiquette they can put in their product.
01:49The food detectives are now testing this small infrared camera to beat honey fraud.
01:54It could be used to check quality at the beekeeper's property, avoiding lengthy and expensive lab tests.
02:00With this device, the person who is going to do the quality controls,
02:05recoge in-situ the honey samples.
02:08They prepare them in a very fast and simple way.
02:12They place them in the sensor.
02:14And in a few seconds, they have information about whether it's a honey that is adulterated or pure.
02:21To better understand how to identify the adulterated honey,
02:24the team built a database of both hive-made honey and sugary syrups that imitate the work of the bees.
02:31Food detective Noemi Quintanel shows us the simple recipe for fake honey.
02:36The adulterated honey are very easy to synthesize.
02:39We start from pure honey and 100% syrup.
02:43We mainly use two syrups, which are the syrups of rice and the corn syrup,
02:47the most used nowadays in the market.
02:49The fake and real honey database is used to train the system to recognize different samples and detect fraud.
03:17This honey research is centered on the Spanish region of Asturias.
03:20It mostly benefits local authorities who can use the camera technology to verify the disease.
03:23quality of honey sold in the region.
03:24And they hope it can be used further afield, too.
03:25This honey research is centered on the Spanish region of Asturias.
03:28It mostly benefits local authorities who can use the camera technology to verify the quality of honey sold in the region.
03:32And they hope it can be used further afield, too.
03:33This honey research is centered on the Spanish region of Asturias.
03:37It mostly benefits local authorities who can use the camera technology to verify the quality of honey sold in the region.
03:44And they hope it can be used further afield, too.
03:46It's a very expected tool.
03:47It's a very expected tool, very necessary tool, and we're hoping that we can homologize it.
03:56It will help consumers to know what milk they are choosing and why they have to pay it.
04:01That added value that milk has will be an important advance, not only for Asturias, not only for Spain, but also for Europe.
04:12While fake honey isn't bad for your health,
04:14the beekeeper Julio encourages consumers to check the quality label when they're buying a jar.
04:19I hope they can finish with the fraud in the sector of the sale of milk.
04:25All those milk that come from different countries, from different origins, from different qualities,
04:32will be subject to the same controls that make us subject to the apicultors or ambassadors of the national territory.
04:39And, above all, to be aware of the people that we have to buy a certified product,
04:44whether it be the cost of the same, because it's a guarantee for the consumer.
04:48That's all for this episode.
04:50Next time on The Food Detectives, we're in Portugal,
04:52where connected vineyards promise total traceability in wine.
04:56See you then.
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