Hello all.

I am a sideliner who works in town while I grow my numbers toward a full
time apiary.  My job in the engineering department of a food equipment
manufacturer allows all sorts of publications relevant to our customers to
flow across my desk, one of which is "Food Engineering."  Annually, Food
Engineering distributes a $150.00 buyer's guide called "Food Master"
followed with the byline "Where buying decisions are made." As the name
implies, it is a volume produced for manufactures of equipment, contractors,
ingredient vendors, etc. that Process folks, Buyers and the like use to
service and stock food grade facilities.

In reviewing the 2001 edition's index of vendor's I noticed a category that
was quite alarming to me as a honey producer entitled "Honey Replacers" (!)
I can divulge the manufactures under this disturbing little heading if the
moderators wish, or you may visit the catalog online by going to
www.foodmaster.com> Ingredients> Product Category Directory>
Honey/Ingredients> Honey Replacers, and view the list for yourselves. I will
say one of the first ones on the list is an anagram beginning with "A", and
is a well-known producer of corn syrup.

As I said before, I am at this time, "po-dunk" in size, and buy fructose in
the thousands of pounds, rather than the tens of thousand, but rest assured,
if I ever do reach that point, I will not be buying from this entity, and
would advocate any honey producer wishing to discourage this kind of stuff
to abstain from buying from them as well. Maybe we should introduce a
category called "Fructose Replacers."

Also to blame, I feel, is "Food Engineering" for entertaining such a
category.  The NHB is listed as a source for liquid honey in the same
publication. I feel they should work very diligently to discourage this.

My family was a medium-sized beef producer for three generations, and that
has gone by the wayside for a variety of reasons, in favor of big corporate
feed lots.  I can tell you we need to rally against this mentality, or we
could all be in for some big changes.


John Keim
Keim Apiaries
Fairview, Kansas