Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Perris]

It happens in Europe too. But there are consumer and governmental organisations who check our food from time to time. So if a factory is selling food with a wrong label they get caught eventually. Fines and warnings make sure there wont do it twice (if they survive).

We did have some scandals in the past with poisoned food and such. Too much poison on grapes. Broken glass in a batch canned food. Cows meat (chopped) that contained horse meat and many more. The meat factury had more issues and had to close.
LOL If there is a safety issue they publish it and consumers are called to take the product back to the shop to receive another product.

this is a bit out-dated; the problem is more widespread now. See e.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/a...e-oil-fraud-mislabelling-cases-record-high-eu from earlier this year.

"In February, in a typical example, Germany reported a case from Israel of “lampante oil”, a quality considered not suitable for human consumption without further refining, being marketed as “extra virgin olive oil”. Some oils crossed several borders, with Germany reporting a case of “misleading mislabelling of olive oil from Syria, via the Netherlands” in March.

Of the 182 olive oil fraud and non-compliance notifications sent to the EU since the start of 2023, 54 related to products from Italy, 41 from Spain and 39 from Greece...

climate-driven inflation was often behind rising levels of fraud: “Whenever we see fluctuations in prices of a commodity it’s always a clear sign of increased fraud in the next few months, as it provides an opportunity for people to cheat. Olive oil is one example. There has also been massive increases in things like chocolate where cocoa production is a massive issue; because of climate change there will be big increases in things like coffee. The more processed a food is, the more likely there will be fraud.”

 

[Perris]

Sometimes I wonder if the government here is trying to poison us with all that garbage they put in food here.

It's not *the government* putting the garbage in, it's the food manufacturers. The government is failing in its duty to protect consumers, succumbing to lobbying from the firms that they should be regulating properly.

 

[Sally PB]

I recently discovered that honey can be diluted with corn syrup and still be labeled "100% pure honey". That's just wrong. I buy from local beekeepers now.

What I heard at a bee club meeting is up to 10% "other syrup" can still be called 100% honey. The person relaying this information said, "Please don't do this when you sell your honey. Just... don't."

Other fakes are from beekeepers that feed sugar the whole year

There are times during the year (in my Michigan climate) when I have to feed my bees or they would starve. But it is NOT the entire year. And I would never feed sugar when there is a "nectar flow," meaning there is something in bloom that they will forage and use to make honey.

Best chance to buy real honey is if you buy directly from a beekeeper, with a label of nearby production or organic honey. These kind of honey is never cheap.

As it shouldn't be. I feel like I'm getting a deal at $48/gallon when I've purchased honey from a friend who is a beekeeper.

Testing for quality at home seems easy according to a tip I have been reading. A spoonful of the fake ones, dissolves immediately in a glass of water. Pure honey dissolves much slower, often you have to stir. Bubbles: look in the jar for tiny air bubbles.makes

Or put the jar of "honey" in the fridge. If it doesn't crystalize -- which it should do at around 50 degrees F, it isn't pure honey. I bought a jar of "Wildflower honey" at Costco that didn't crystallize; my friend's honey did.

 

[Sally PB]

Sunny's reaction to the discussion about faked foods.

 

[no fly zone]

Sometimes I wonder if the government here is trying to poison us with all that garbage they put in food here.

The FDA has been compromised for decades. It is controlled by the very same corporations they are supposed to be policing.

 

[Canadian Wind]

The FDA has been compromised for decades. It is controlled by the very same corporations they are supposed to be policing.

"Money Talks."

 

[BDutch]

…

Or put the jar of "honey" in the fridge. If it doesn't crystalize -- which it should do at around 50 degrees F, it isn't pure honey. I bought a jar of "Wildflower honey" at Costco that didn't crystallize; my friend's honey did.

Crystallising or not depends on the kind of honey/flowers too. You should look into this further if you want to know which types of honey don’t crystallise and which does very easily.

The FDA has been compromised for decades. It is controlled by the very same corporations they are supposed to be policing.

I know the NVWA (like your FDA) is compromised too. Especially in the meat industry.
A few years ago we had a scandal about bribing vets that check the slaughterhouses. Vets not willing to cooperate with the slaughterhouse got threatened.
Usually it helps only temporarily if such wrong gets in the open.

Robin taking the honour - chicken tax.

 

[Shadrach]

One and a half hours today. Cold, grey and damp. We did go out for a while but it was pretty chilly in the wind and after some minimal foraging on the chickens part we decided to retire to the coop extension out of the wind.

 

[ManueB]

I saw on a Dutch tv program ‘Keuringsdienst van waarde’ that it seems almost impossible to see the difference between honey and syrup in a test.
‘ Keuringsdienst van waarde’ tested fifteen jars of honey from the Netherlands and sent them to a lab. Something strange came out of it. According to the official EU research method, it is pure honey.

That makes it easy to dilute honey with syrup. The EU gov works on a new test, but this will take another 2-3 years .
The ‘Keuringsdienst van waarde’ found a laboratory in Germany that uses this new testing method and found : only 4 of the 15 jars with honey were real honey.

Source: https://kro-ncrv.nl/programmas/keur...oning-echt-of-nep-aangelengd-met-suikerstroop

It seems the fake honey they sell in the supermarket is often from outside the EU (like from China). Other fakes are from beekeepers that feed sugar the whole year (often from South America).

Testing for quality at home seems easy according to a tip I have been reading. A spoonful of the fake ones, dissolves immediately in a glass of water. Pure honey dissolves much slower, often you have to stir. Bubbles: look in the jar for tiny air bubbles.makes

Best chance to buy real honey is if you buy directly from a beekeeper, with a label of nearby production or organic honey. These kind of honey is never cheap.

What I heard at a bee club meeting is up to 10% "other syrup" can still be called 100% honey. The person relaying this information said, "Please don't do this when you sell your honey. Just... don't."

There are times during the year (in my Michigan climate) when I have to feed my bees or they would starve. But it is NOT the entire year. And I would never feed sugar when there is a "nectar flow," meaning there is something in bloom that they will forage and use to make honey.

As it shouldn't be. I feel like I'm getting a deal at $48/gallon when I've purchased honey from a friend who is a beekeeper.

Or put the jar of "honey" in the fridge. If it doesn't crystalize -- which it should do at around 50 degrees F, it isn't pure honey. I bought a jar of "Wildflower honey" at Costco that didn't crystallize; my friend's honey did.

A few years ago, we made a mistake and kept feeding our hives after we put the honey bodies on top, because it was a cold spring with late frosts combined to a draught and we were worried they wouldn't find enough to eat.
The honey that year was disgusting, even though we had stopped feeding more than a month before harvesting.
I believe that could be the case with many of those fraudulent honey. It's not mixed with syrup afterwards, but the bees have been fed throughout the honey season.

It's one of those food where human taste is able to detect the fraud, even for a relatively uneducated palate. Sugar honey just tastes
different.
There is a local honey sold in supermarkets here that people say is mixed with syrup. It's on a basis of chestnut tree honey, which is darker and smokier to start with, so it's harder to tell : but it does feel like sugar has been added to the honey.

Easier to tell than with olive oil, in my view. Still I was surprised that I could taste the difference between the tunisian olive oil we are gifted by one of my partner's colleague, made from his home's olives, that is not cold pressed, and the local one we buy from a friend near Nice that is.

this is a bit out-dated; the problem is more widespread now. See e.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/a...e-oil-fraud-mislabelling-cases-record-high-eu from earlier this year.

"In February, in a typical example, Germany reported a case from Israel of “lampante oil”, a quality considered not suitable for human consumption without further refining, being marketed as “extra virgin olive oil”. Some oils crossed several borders, with Germany reporting a case of “misleading mislabelling of olive oil from Syria, via the Netherlands” in March.

Of the 182 olive oil fraud and non-compliance notifications sent to the EU since the start of 2023, 54 related to products from Italy, 41 from Spain and 39 from Greece...

climate-driven inflation was often behind rising levels of fraud: “Whenever we see fluctuations in prices of a commodity it’s always a clear sign of increased fraud in the next few months, as it provides an opportunity for people to cheat. Olive oil is one example. There has also been massive increases in things like chocolate where cocoa production is a massive issue; because of climate change there will be big increases in things like coffee. The more processed a food is, the more likely there will be fraud.”

I would encourage anyone who can and is concerned to support NGO's like Foodwatch in the EU. It's not only about finding out those frauds, it's also sadly about lobbying to counter the foods industries lobbies, and lobbying takes heavy money.

Chocolate is another product like honey where legislation plays an important role. We make a lot of fuss in France about how food is named and it's not legal to call something pure chocolate or traditional chocolate if it has palm oil, or any other vegetable oil in it. It has been a subject of conflict in the EU for 30 years, legal decisions going back and forth, with Italy and France being more protective and the majority of countries considering that 5% addition of vegetable oil still make a pure chocolate .

Tax : teenage Merle, three months old, little devil in the making.

 

[HiEverybirdy]

I've been thinking about giving my hen Kara milk thistle too because she has ascites and sometimes either a tiny speck of blood or yellow droppings, which makes me think her liver could need support. I wonder if you have heard of any counter-indication ? I only read that it is not recommended to give it along with any other meds as it will tend to diminish their effects.

While I was looking for the extract, I found out that milk thistle seeds are sold here for domestic birds like pigeons to add to their food as a preventive for liver issue. I wonder if that could be done for chickens. I suppose the silymarine content isn't monitored in those seeds as in an extract so it would be a lot less potent.

I don't remember glaring contraindications but am not an expert.

Instinctively, I did stop giving milk thistle to Raisin a few months after she was symptom-free. That may or may not have been the right thing to do.

She wasn't exhibiting any ill effects from having a daily dose of it over oats. If anything, the joy of a special oat treat every morning contributed positively to her health.

This conversation is very meta. When I first searched, "liver support for chickens" (or something similar; can't remember the exact phrase), the search engine returned a post on BYC by you, @ManueB! I believe it's one where you mentioned silymarin, which sent me down a shallow rabbit hole about milk thistle and silymarin that provided enough confidence to give it a try.