Most major Indian honey brands fail adulteration test in Germany: CSE

New Delhi, Dec 2 : Several leading honey brands sold in India have failed adulteration tests in Germany, an investigation by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) claimed on Wednesday.
The CSE study revealed that almost all the brands of honey being sold in Indian markets are adulterated with sugar syrup as 77 per cent of samples in the tests were found adulterated.
Honey samples from leading brands such as Dabur, Patanjali, Baidyanath, Zandu, Hitkari and Apis Himalaya, all failed the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) laboratory tests currently being used globally to check for modified sugar syrups, the CSE said.
Only three out of the 13 brands – Saffola, Markfed Sohna and Nature’s Nectar (one out of two samples) — passed all the tests, it added.
For the study, CSE food researchers selected 13 top and smaller brands of processed and raw honey being sold in India. Samples of these brands were first tested at the Centre for Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food (CALF) at the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in Gujarat.
Almost all the top brands (except Apis Himalaya) passed the tests of purity, while a few smaller brands failed the tests to detect C4 sugar – call it basic adulteration using cane sugar.