Honey Fraud Rampant: 96% of UK Imports Fake, EU's 3.4 Billion Euro Problem

The issue of food fraud, particularly in the honey industry, has been a persistent problem, with a significant portion of imported honey in the UK being found to be fake. Tests have revealed that 24 out of 25 jars of honey were either suspicious or did not meet regulatory standards. This problem is not limited to the UK; the European Commission has also highlighted that one-third of all honey products were fake in 2020, amounting to a fraudulent industry worth 3.4 billion euros of counterfeit goods entering the EU in 2023.

Economically motivated adulteration (EMA) is a significant contributor to this issue. Fraudsters substitute valuable ingredients with less expensive products, such as sweeteners or low-quality oil, leading to severe economic and health complications. These adulterants closely mimic honey’s chemical profile, making it extremely difficult to detect with traditional tests.

The supply chain for honey is profoundly fractured, with a jar of honey passing through six to eight key points before it arrives on the shelves. Current practices make authenticity verification extremely difficult, and the inefficient paper-based bureaucracy exacerbates the problem. This makes it hard to track origin obscuration attempts in intermediary countries, leaving the true extent of food fraud unknown.

The EU’s Digital Product Passport aims to tackle this issue by enhancing traceability and transparency in its supply chains. By 2030, all goods in the EU must have a digital product passport containing detailed information on the product’s lifecycle, origins, and environmental effects. However, this approach has been criticized as ineffective and easy to manipulate, ultimately leaving the door open for fraud to continue.

The fundamental flaw of the EU’s approach is that it relies on human oversight, which is vulnerable to corruption. Technology, on the other hand, is agnostic and doesn’t care about money or incentives. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) provides a solution to this problem. SSI establishes trust between issuers, holders, and verifiers, making fraud much more challenging because every product must be backed by a verifiable credential from a trusted source to prove it’s real.

Issuers, such as manufacturers or certification bodies, create and sign verifiable credentials that attest to a product’s authenticity. The holder, typically the product owner, stores and presents these credentials when required. Verifiers, such as retailers, customs officials, or consumers, can check the credentials’ validity without relying on a central authority. Verifiable credentials are protected by cryptography, ensuring that any attempt to sell fake products will be immediately revealed.

SSI provides the underlying infrastructure necessary to reliably track the identity of products across multiple bodies, standards, and regions. By enabling tamper-proof, end-to-end traceability in every single product, SSI ensures sufficient validators confirm the data is correct to tackle fraud and obfuscation attempts. SSI also empowers consumers to independently verify products without relying on third-party databases, further reducing the risk of misinformation.

As honey fraud methods continue to expand, so do the products’ harm to consumers and local businesses. The EU’s Digital Product Passports aim to improve traceability, but they fall short of fraudsters’ sophistication. Implementation of SSI is a necessary step to effectively address the extent to which fraudsters go to ensure their product arrives on shelves.