“Relax, folks, it really is honey after all”

Dan Charles at NPR reports on how parts of the media joined in last month to hype a report by journalist Andrew Schneider in Food Safety News raising alarms about the safety and authenticity of honey. (Similarly: Maggie Koerth-Baker, BoingBoing). “It sounded so right, plenty of people decided that it just had to be true. … But then we decided to look into it a little more closely. We talked to honey companies, academic experts, and one of the world’s top honey laboratories in Germany. The closer we looked, the more misleading the story in Food Safety News seemed.”

My Cato colleague Sallie James was among the few to take a skeptical tone about the Schneider allegations when they first hit the press. And as NPR points out, Food Safety News is part of the sprawling new media empire of Bill Marler, the very media-savvy food poisoning lawyer whose Marler Clark law firm has done much to sway press discussion of many food safety issues. On a different topic, did Marler really say the other day that raw milk farmers should count themselves lucky they’re not put to death?

4 Comments

  • OK, one for NPR.

    I still support defunding them of tax dollars.

  • Walter, Walter – perhaps you missed the other NPR piece that was supportive of Food Safety News reporting on honey:

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/12/13/142903171/funny-honey-bringing-trust-to-a-sweet-sector-fraught-with-suspicion

    As for comparing raw milk farmers (or, frankly any farmer) who poisons their customers, most of them in the US would much prefer to not face China’s criminal “justice” system.

    As for the media empire – just think of me as the not evil owner of FOX.

    Happy Holidays

  • “Am I to understand that there is a REAL frog in these?”

  • I had some honey just yesterday from a beekeeper who is a friend of mine. It was delicious.