At 3:51 PM -0700 00/7/15, Hank Mishima wrote:
>Bill's comments regarding making USA honey distinctive could be a good
>marketing technique.

        This has been done in New Zealand, for 3 decades at least, oriented
to tourist and some exports.
        The most interesting is manuka honey; Prof Peter Molan has
pioneered assays of antibiotic activity.  Every state public health
service, and every university, should have a group of microbiologists and
chemists cooperating to develop assays of honey for medical uses.  Liquid
honey generally is the top wound dressing, but manuka is in a class of its
own.  There may well be other myrtle-family honeys of superior antibiotic
potency.
        I don't mean to play down the difficulties in establishing the
monitoring assays for labelling, but it has got to be easier than trying to
label a range of GE food (which many govts have undertaken to do)!


>As for the organic standards, it is not the organic producers who have
>had problems, it has been big agribusiness which has tried to to keep
>the organic products from being distinctive from their own. They have
>heavily lobbied Congress and the USDA for such things as irradiated
>produce and crops grown from sewage sludge to be classified as organic
>as well as GM produce. Fortunately this is not going to happen thanks to
>a grassroots common sense effort by many around this nation.

        Watching from a distance, that's the recent history alright.
Oganics are booming in many districts and so the big agrichemical
corporations have been trying to tilt the playing field.   Most rDNA-crops
have been developed by agrichemical cos duPont, Monsanto etc (tho' not all
have gone for this fad  -  Dow has been wider than most).


>You may get this same type of effort from packers of foreign honey
>should domestic producers want labelling.

        Could this scenario be sketched please?  I have trouble imagining
how it would develop.


>It is apparent that as long as consumers see honey as all the same,
>market forces will continue to make it difficult for honey producers in
>this country to make a living family wage unless demand increases or
>supply decreases.

        Until someone explains how this could be incorrect, I think we have
to face up to it.
So it's back to concepts for higher-value products.
        I mean no insolence to esteemed big USA beekeepers  -  my Root ABC
1959 is a treasure, and I have no idea how yards could become much smaller
and beekeepers more numerous, but I do think those trends are desirable in
the interest of bee health and of our social hygiene.

        As we set forth into our varroa era we'll need to confer with those
who have been dealing with it.  A Fiji resort may not be the best venue for
a while, sadly  . . .

R

-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878   Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
                (9) 524 2949