Reply #4: When I was researching stuff like this a year ago

[DeschutesRiver]

what I found was that the FDA only inspects a small percentage of what comes into our country. And if they do find something tainted or wish to reject a shipment? They do so....and the rejected goods simply are taken away and then over to another port elsewhere to try again, usually with success. It was so fantasical that I had a hard time believing our system was so lax, and that we as a nation/government to do business with countries whose standards weren't even in the ballpark with ours (and god knows, we are very far from perfect ourselves re safety issues).

You can't consider anything "real" unless you can personally authenticate it; you can't be certain there is no taint unless you craft/create/cook/bake it yourself. My belief is that this is always how it has been; however, we have faked ourselves out with all of our safety rules, our agencies, our belief that if we assign a task to .gov or whoever, it will be done in the best possible manner - our suspension of our own common sense in these matters and our desire to let supposed "experts" determine what is safe or not for us is slowly killing us.

Was tossing out some New Yorkers last night, from the last year or so, and ran across an article I shared with dh about fraud in the olive oil industry, which had never occurred to me before. I was amazed that no matter what product we are talking about, the crooks are in the majority and ahead of the pack in screwing the consumers. Here is the online version from the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_...

Bugged me to find out about the olive oil fraud, and so does this honey deal. Except I can buy honey locally, just have to find people I can verify and trust on this product. I am out of luck on the olive oil (too expensive now anyway).