a couple of Przemek Skoskiewicz snips followed by > my comments
 
This made me think: perhaps I've missed it, but wouldn't it make sense to spread this idea nationwide?
 
>I seem to recall the article suggested to expand this to regions?? 

In the current US political climate, with a disfunctional executive & legislative branches, it seems that it will be years before reasonable new policies that protect food supply in the US will become codified.

>Of course the other larger problem is the imho uninformed (given the history of adulteration of honey)of the deregulation crowd. As in all programs this plan has it flaws with the primary one's being 1)you have to physically identify apiary sites (not an easy to sale requirement here in Texas) to determine gps location of hives (they then count hives on the ground and these are multiplied by the state average yield) and this determines how many 'real Texas honey' tags an individual receives* and 2) the NMR** analysis is very expensive and this part of the program is only doable due to grant money and 3) honey produced in other locations (ie commercial beekeepers who move bees to North Dakota & who's permanent location may not even be in Texas) likely will fall right thru the cracks.

>as an economist the larger the differential between wholesale price (which appears to be in decline) and authentic honey will increase the profitability (rent in economic terms) for cheating and fraud.  

>Give all the negatives above it is a start & hopefully we can iron out the deficiency as time goes by.

*given past history of how these things work and how clever man is in deceiving the consumer for money (they had a fancy bit of jargon for this in the article) there should be a great secondary market in resold or fraudulent 'real Texas honey' tags.

**I have some personal interest in NMR technology since my father in law (still alive at 97) documented the first NMR signal (Stanford University) and being the driving force in building the first commercially available NMR equipment.  

Gene in Central Texas....     

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html