In her opening speech at the Honey Conference, Dr. Zsuzsanna Borvendég gave a vivid illustration of the problems caused by the import of poor quality honey from third countries for European beekeepers.
After the conference, we also asked the MEP of Our Country in a lightning interview how she and her family relate to honey consumption as a private person.
He also has a personal interest
"I mentioned at the beginning of my opening presentation that our family is personally involved in beekeeping, as my late father-in-law was a nationally renowned beekeeper, and his invention was awarded a gold medal at a world beekeeping exhibition. So I am understandably somewhat biased when it comes to beekeeping and honey production." - said Zsuzsanna Borvendég. The Our Country politician added that in her immediate family, honey consumption is certainly much higher than average. "We often drink the tea with honey, I use it in cakes, drizzled on toast or mixed with muesli. And when we get sick, we also use propolis as a healing aid." - he explained. He said that the most commonly consumed type of honey is acacia honey, but he likes silk grass honey for baking because of its pleasant taste, and lime honey is usually added to tea. "My father-in-law's "legacy" lasted a long time, but now that stock is gone, so we buy honey ourselves. However, when I do buy, I always make sure I buy from local, known producers, from reliable places. We usually buy propolis from the pharmacy, but sometimes we get it from our beekeeper friends." - he shared.
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Slovak and Bulgarian help to protect honey
Although in this interview he was asked about private consumption of honey, as a politician he felt it was important to highlight some related issues. "When I raised this issue - the protection of beekeepers' interests and the importance of honey quality - at the request of Our Homeland in the parliamentary group, I immediately received support. I was surprised by this positive attitude, especially from my Slovak and Bulgarian colleagues. The reason for this is that beekeepers in their countries must have similar problems to ours. We have started to collect data on the distribution of honey within the EU, and it turns out that there is a very serious problem of cheap fake honey being imported from third countries. said. According to Zsuzsanna Borvendég, this has made intra-EU producers so uncompetitive that they will not be able to survive in the market.
He reminded us that if they go bankrupt and liquidate the apiaries, it will not only mean that families will be financially ruined and we will lose access to delicious, healthy honey, but it will also be a very serious problem for nature.
Since the wild bee population has all but disappeared, if there are no more apiaries, we won't have any bees, and then these little animals won't be able to do the job we call pollination. Pollination by insects is carried out by bees in nearly 80 % of nature, and the lack of pollination could lead to a perhaps unprecedented ecological disaster.
The committee vetoed their proposal on political grounds
According to Zsuzsanna Borvendég, it is good news that many organisations in Europe are lobbying for the EU to ban honey imports from third countries, as long as we are self-sufficient in honey. "Unfortunately, we do not produce enough honey to avoid importing, but we need to ensure that until domestic producers have brought their products to the market, imports are not possible." - he said. According to him, we should then also ban the mixing of imported honey with local products, as it is a big problem that good quality honey is now sold mixed with poor quality counterfeits - something the representative of Our Homeland personally checked out in the shops. "This drives down the price, and honest producers are not even getting the cost price for their good quality products. The group tabled a motion on the subject, but it was not accepted by the committee, obviously for political reasons." - she told us the sad news. So they are trying to find MEPs individually and convince them to support their proposals. "We hope that this will be a success, as it is a proposal that everyone can support wholeheartedly, regardless of party affiliation." - he concluded.
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