In this YouTube monologue, Laurence Edwards raises awareness about the widespread adulteration of honey, citing the Netflix series Rotten which labels honey as the third most adulterated food worldwide. He explains how fake honey is produced by feeding bees sugar syrup, adding coloring and other additives to pass honey tests, allowing importers to sell it cheaper than genuine beekeepers. Edwards references a recent landmark US lawsuit where a large group of commercial beekeepers successfully sued importers of counterfeit honey, leading to higher bulk prices for authentic honey and demonstrating the impact of legal action. He expresses long‑standing frustration that the UK lacked similar advocacy until the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) launched its own petition to pressure the UK government into implementing stringent testing procedures for both imported and domestically produced honey. Edwards praises the BBKA’s initiative, urges viewers to sign the petition—currently with about 2,000 supporters—to compel governmental action and improve honey quality across the UK, and briefly promotes a separate video showing how he makes soft‑set honey using a stainless drill bit.
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Is the honey that you're eating real, or has that honey been adulterated? One of my favorite series on Netflix is Rotten, where they go around all of the different food industries talking about disgusting habits and various different things that are impacting the food industry. The honey episode opened my eyes completely because honey is the 3rd most adulterated food in the world. And when you come to think about it, It's kind of simple why. It's so easy to fake what honey is, feed the bees sugar syrup, stick in some coloring, stick in some special things so it means it's gonna pass the honey test, and then you can knock it out for much cheaper than beekeepers can actually produce it for. There was a landmark case in the US recently where a group, a very large group of commercial beekeepers brought this case forward against importers of what they believed to be fake honey. Now, they won that case, and from what I'm led to believe, it's had a massive impact on the price of honey in the US. Not in terms of what you're paying for on the shelves, but in terms of the bulk price that the bee farmers are earning for their honey that was at record lows. This is a good thing. This really does help drive the quality of honey, and I've been longing for someone to do this in the UK for what seems like forever. I tried to do my own petition a couple of months back now talking about raw honey, and I just wish that a big organization would take that on board and do something of their own. Now, I'm not saying at all that the BBKA have jumped on what I did. They probably don't even know who I am. But out of nowhere, they have set up their own petition to lobby the UK government to put in place stringent procedures in order to analyse the honey that's coming into the UK, the honey that's produced in the UK, to make sure that it's not adulterated. Thank you, BBKA. That is music to my ears. I said I'd do a video on this. I'm not gonna go into any further detail. If you value the honey that you're putting on your toast and you wanna stop the import of fake adulterated honey into the UK, definitely sign up to the petition. It's already got about 2,000 subscribers. Let's get it to the point where the government has to take action and hopefully we can improve the quality of honey for everyone in the UK. If you love honey, you wanna see how I make my soft-set honey, check out this link here where I give you some really cool slow-mo shots of making soft-set honey with a stainless drill bit.