Australian Coles to Stop Selling Honey Partly Sourced From China, Argentina

An Australian supermarket chain, Coles, will stop selling a brand of honey that is partly sourced from China and Argentina, saying it wants to support Australian production in its ‘Australia first’ policy.

In a statement, Coles said it will stop selling the low-end Allowrie brand under Capilano Honey. The product contains honey sourced from China and Argentina, depending on the batch. According to Allowrie labels, the product contains 30 percent Australian honey.

Coles’s statement said that its own-brand honey was “100 percent Australian” and that Coles is “proud to support Australian producers and the work of Australian beekeepers,” Reuters reported.

Ben McKee, Capilano’s managing director, said the company has been working with Coles on a replacement product.

McKee added that Allowrie products have not been the subject of any quality complaints or recalls.

Woolworths, a rival of Coles, said it will be keeping the Allowrie brand on its shelves.

“Woolworths is a big supporter of Australian honey, with around three-quarters of the range available on our shelves consisting of 100 percent Australian grown honey,” a Woolworths spokesman said, SMH reported.

“Allowrie is a good quality product, offering an affordable price point for consumers on a budget. It has proved a popular choice for consumers, particularly families, and will continue to be offered as part of our broader honey range,” he added.

Founder of Beechworth Honey, Jodie Goldsworthy, said Coles’s decision was “a win for Australian consumers and Australian farmers,” SMH reported.

Stephen Ware, AHBIC’s executive director at the time, said quarantine officers cannot check every batch of Chinese honey entering the country, but that importers had been warned that royal jelly from China could be contaminated.

Ware said that unscrupulous Australian health food distributors had been relabeling contaminated Chinese-imported honey as “Australian-made” or “Product of Australia” and then exporting the products to Asia and Europe, The Age reported. He said chloramphenicol had been detected in such honey.

Chloramphenicol is an antibiotic used to treat serious diseases in humans, including typhoid fever, but it is specifically prohibited in food-producing animals in Australia. In rare cases, the antibiotic can cause a life-threatening blood disease known as aplastic anaemia.

Another issue with regard to imported product involves honey that is not really honey. In June 2014, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) fined a food distributing company Basfoods $30,600 over its honey product name, Victoria Honey, when it was actually imported from Turkey—testing of this “honey” found it was actually all plant sugars.

Later in 2014, the ACCC again fined another Turkish ‘honey’. Bera Foods received a fine of $10,200 for using a map of Australia on its product label, which later was found to comprise mostly plant sugars.

McKee told the ABC in 2016 that for Capilano, its namesake brand is 100 percent Australian honey.

“All imported honey is comprehensively tested and meets the same rigorous quality assurance standards as honey produced in Australia,” he added, referring to the strict standards by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ).

Under this requirement, food products like blended honey, which includes imported ingredients will need to show a bar chart to indicate the percentage of Australian ingredients. For Australian grown, produced, or made food, the label will show a kangaroo with a standard phrase that it was grown, produced, or made in Australia.

Previously, labels such as “made with Australian and imported ingredients” had consumers complaining to ACCC that it was unclear.

Regardless of the origin, AHBIC continues to ensure that honey products on the shelves aren’t phoney.