> Well, last I looked, bare aluminum parts are 
> in currently in direct contact with honey in 
> many if not most commercial beekeeping 
> extraction lines currently in use in Alberta,

I think you will find that those aluminum parts are heavily anodized.

> This is a typical case of where an almost 
> infinitesimal risk has been blown far out 
> of proportion 

The risk is different from the one you dismiss out of hand, and is not
infinitesimal for unpainted/uncoated/un-anodized aluminum. Foreign particles
of any type, including metals, are not acceptable in food sold for human
consumption.  A bottle of honey should contain zero metal chunks or filings,
regardless of what type of metal they might be.  

I offered an easy example in a prior post of how normal use of an extractor
with an aluminum armature could easily result in frame brads scraping off
hunks of aluminum oxide from a non-anodized surface.  These days, anyone
with $6 can buy a 200, 400, or 600 micron filter from Dadant that fits into
a 5-gallon plastic pail, and at least filter out the easily-visible
particles in a simple room-temperature gravity scheme, but a 150 micron
diameter hunk of aluminum would still make a painfully noticeable puncture
wound in the tongue or gums if it made it past the filters and into your
mouth.

> and an great example of how the 
> precautionary principle can be 
> used to distract people from far 
> greater risks.

I'm not clear on what the precautionary principle has to do with this, as
both aluminum oxide and aluminum hydroxide are "Generally Recognized As
Safe" (GRAS) in food by the (US) FDA and other countries' food regulators.
So, the concern is not over a potential issue of a "toxin" in food, but the
more prosaic problem of metal shavings/filings in food.

To repeat - heavy anodizing will eliminate the problem entirely, and much
more permanently than painting.


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