Honey is a lynchpin ingredient. Pull it out of the food supply, and a variety of diets start wobbling and staggering. Vegetarians, whole foods enthusiasts, most kids, cartoon bears, and even some vegans would be hard-pressed to maintain their diets if it weren't for honey.

It's a very simple food, after all. Bees make honey. Beekeeper collects it. The honey gets bottled. End of story right?

The honey trade is anything but simple, however, namely because the U.S. is so dependent on foreign honey - 60-70% of our honey is imported, much of it from China. Making matters worse, in 2002, 2003, and 2007, U.S. Customs seized multiple Chinese honey shipments that were tainted with antibiotics banned in the U.S., including chloramphenicol, a chemical that has been linked to serious blood disorders.

Despite the fact that the FDA has been trying to crack down, Chinese honey tainted with banned chemicals is still making its way into domestic sources through a maze of black marketing, graft, and flat-out corporate lying. Indeed, reports that nearly 5 million pounds of Chinese honey had been relabeled in Australia and shipped to the U.S. have raised quite a few eyebrows in this country - especially with food security and FDA shortcomings weighing so heavily on American's minds.

"The FDA is trying to wear too many hats," says Brian Fredericksen of Ames Farm in southern Minnesota. He's a small, single-source honey producer who holds himself to high standards of transparency in his business. At his website, for example, you can look up the lot code appearing on your Ames Farm honey jar and see the hive from which it was gathered.

"We're seeing all the FDA's shortcomings in the current salmonella crisis," Fredericksen says. "We ask a lot of the FDA. In the honey world, corruption is very prevalent, and the FDA can't catch all of it."

A recent Seattle P-I investigative series called "Honey Laundering" seems to back Fredericksen up, painting a picture of an industry that looks more like the Wild West than the House on Pooh Corner. Among other things, the P-I found:

* Big shipments of contaminated honey from China are frequently laundered in other countries -- an illegal practice called "transshipping" -- in order to avoid U.S. import fees, protective tariffs or taxes imposed on foreign products that intentionally undercut domestic prices.

* Tens of thousands of pounds of honey entering the U.S. each year come from countries that raise few bees and have no record of producing honey for export.

* The government promises intense scrutiny of honey crossing our borders but only a small fraction is inspected, and seizures and arrests remain rare.

Worse, not even U.S. companies on the receiving end of tainted shipments can be counted on to report problems. Sue Bee, one of America's biggest honey producers, purchases 40% of its honey from outside the U.S., and flat out refuses to report tainted honey when they find it. From the above PI link:

"We have not notified the FDA in the past because we don't have title to that property," [a spokesperson for Sue Bee] said.

"We deal with a core group of suppliers that have long, established ties in the import business, and we're assuming that when we reject a load of honey, they'll return it to the people they purchased it from."

Fredericksen says, "They know darn well it gets resold. Honey confiscated [by corporations] is resold in the market and Americans buy it and eat it."

What options, then, do consumers have if unlabeled, tainted honey is pouring into the U.S.? Not many, unfortunately. The government leaves honey-grading to the honey industry, thus grading claims like "grade a," "pure," or "natural," are utterly meaningless (especially since Chinese honey, in particular, is routinely adulterated with sugars like high fructose corn syrup, according to Honey Authenticity: A Review).

Astonishingly, honey shoppers even need to be wary of certified organic honey, since no USDA National Organic Program standards exist. Some reputable organic certifiers do have their own standards, and as a result, organic honey does appear on the market, but Fredericksen is suspicious.

"I don't think there's really any such thing as organic honey in the United States," he says. "By most standards, you need a clean, three-mile radius around your hives where no one is spraying. That's hard to find in this country."

Furthermore, the claim "certified organic" itself is sometimes entirely fictitious when it comes to honey. Again, from the Seattle P-I:

The Naturally Preferred honey brand, widely distributed by the Kroger supermarket chain, has a USDA seal on the front label. On the back, it boasts, "Certified Organic by the Washington State Department of Agriculture."

Not so, say state officials.

The Washington State Department of Agriculture doesn't certify honey "because we have no standards for organic honey," said agency spokesman Mike Louisell

While Washington State is a good certifier (El Dragón had personal dealings with their organic program and finds them very reputable), there are others who will certify honey regardless of the hives' proximity to farms and agricultural sprays.

"Could I find someone who would certify me?" Fredericksen said. "Yeah, probably, but that wouldn't feel ethical to me."

Plus, truly organic honey would be expensive to produce - very expensive -in Minnesota, Fredericksen says. For a variety of reasons.

"I don't think there's a 6-mile circle south of Duluth that would be free of agriculture chemicals. You get into August when all the flowers dry up and the bees will fly where they need to in search of food. Herbicide use is so prevalent here, not only in farms, but in ditches for weeds and along railroad tracks - no one can control where the bees go.

"[Ames Farm] has this Russian [variety of] bee that comes from a climate similar to the North Shore [of Minnesota], so we could potentially put hives that far north. But up there you have bear problems and I don't know if you've ever seen what a bear does to a hive, but they don't leave anything behind. They don't just take the honey, they demolish the whole thing, so we'd need an electric solar fence to protect the hives to produce anything there. That's a lot of expense for a small amount of honey. It would be fun to do, there are lots of wonderful floral sources up there that would be fun to see how different the honey would be. But I've always had a problem with the price on organics - it seems elitist to me."

It's this kind of honesty from Brian Fredericksen and openness about his challenges as a small producer that convinces me single-source honey is the safest bet on the market. Granted, any beekeeper could cut corners. But it's the large volume honey producers who are more likely to adulterate their honey with corn syrup, import the cheap stuff from China, or, worst of all, use  illegal pesticides or soak rags with chemicals at dangerous dosages and dowse their hives with them to prevent mites and other infestations. By contrast, the Brian Fredericksens of the honey world distinguish themselves by taking the opposite tact - looking for the singular floral sources that define their small region, by maintaining terroir, the local flavor, so essential to small-batch honey.

Noble as it is, this strategy leaves the small American honey producer in a Fair Food Fight, pitting him against far bigger players - like United Natural Foods International, in the case of Brian Fredericksen and Ames Farm.

UNFI is America's largest natural foods wholesaler. If you buy certified organic packaged food from Whole Foods, a grocery co-op, or just about any other natural foods store, chances are, some of your food came from a UNFI warehouse.

"I love the co-ops but they're tough," says Fredericksen. "UNFI has a grip on some stores."

Understandably. UNFI controls production and shipping lines from China to Africa - and its honey is most certainly coming from outside the US - Argentina and/or China, most likely.

"I almost lost bulk sales at [a Twin Cities grocery co-op]. They wanted to carry honey from UNFI because it's inexpensive compared to mine. Fortunately, I went to the co-op and made my case and they went with me."

Making his case, store by store, is really the only weapon Fredericksen has in his Fair Food Fight. One might think that grocery stores would be up to speed on where honey is sourced and the issues surounding its shipment and production. But the fact is, there are so many smoke and mirrors in the food world that it's nearly impossible to tell what's real - even for natural food stores that pride themselves on providing good info and transparency to their customers.

"Yeah, it's definitely all about education for small farmers like me," Fredericksen says. "It's all about making sure people have the information to make smart choices."

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* FYI: Ames Farm has on online store.