A B.C. honey producer may hold the key to helping Canada fight back against honey fraud.

In the last fiscal year, more than 23 per cent of imported honey products tested by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency contained additives, despite being labelled pure.

The agency found the honey had been diluted with rice and corn syrups.

Chilliwack beekeeper Peter Awram’s family has been in the business since the 1970s and he says the industry is becoming less lucrative.

So Awram is taking honey fraud into his own hands by creating a database to track honey in hopes it will help take the fake stuff off the shelves.

Weeding out fake honey

Awram uses nuclear magnetic resonance, one of just a handful of people in North America with a machine capable of  the technology.

The machine detects added syrups in samples.

Beekeeper Peter Awram shows off his nuclear magnetic resonance machine. Awram hopes to use it to build a Canadian database for all of Canada’s honey. (CBC/Mike Zimmer)

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