The news of po­ten­tial leg­is­la­tion that will amend the law re­strict­ing the im­por­ta­tion of hon­ey in­to T&T has stung lo­cal bee­keep­ers.

It first broke when T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to Guyana, Con­rad Enill, re­vealed last No­vem­ber that the leg­is­la­tion would be tabled in Trinidad’s Par­lia­ment.

The bill was tabled in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day and will come up for de­bate soon.

The im­por­ta­tion is­sue has trou­bled gov­ern­ments of the past and has come knock­ing at the door of the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing to the Busi­ness Guardian from Guyana, Enill ex­plained that T&T and Guyana de­vel­oped a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing be­tween both coun­tries as a re­sult of Guyana’s lead­er­ship in agri­cul­ture for Cari­com.

In that con­text, the first thing both coun­tries ex­plored was the bar­ri­ers to goods and ser­vices.

Hon­ey emerged at the top of the list.

Ac­cord­ing to Enill, Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali of Guyana and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley “worked through what was nec­es­sary to change the leg­is­la­tion to al­low for the hon­ey is­sue to be re­solved.”

He said there are sev­er­al com­mit­tees be­tween both coun­tries work­ing through their var­i­ous min­istries on any is­sue that is in­ter­fer­ing with the free move­ment of trade and are mov­ing via leg­is­la­tion to make trade eas­i­er.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Avinash Singh, reaf­firmed this in an in­ter­view with a re­gion­al news­pa­per on March 19.

“The hon­ey mat­ter is close to be­ing re­solved,” Singh had said while at­tend­ing the Food and Agri­cul­ture Re­gion­al Con­fer­ence in Guyana.

“All of the tech­ni­cal mat­ters have al­ready been re­viewed and are ready for im­ple­men­ta­tion,” he added.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Singh for fur­ther de­tails re­gard­ing the pro­posed move but he di­rect­ed ques­tions to Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Kaz­im Ho­sein.

Sev­er­al ques­tions to the min­istry seek­ing clar­i­ty on the leg­is­la­tion, but no re­sponse was giv­en.

Is the lo­cal hon­ey in­dus­try in jeop­ardy?

For over half a cen­tu­ry, this coun­try’s hon­ey, bees and bee-re­lat­ed prod­ucts have been guid­ed by the Food and Drug Act of 1960 and Bee­keep­ing and Bee Prod­ucts Act of 1935.

The act pro­hibits the im­por­ta­tion of the prod­uct.

It has long been a con­tentious is­sue at the re­gion­al lev­el, which goes against the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas signed in 1973 which cre­at­ed a Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

Guyana has long called for ac­cess to en­able its hon­ey to pass through T&T’s ports and move to oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

While the amend­ment to the leg­is­la­tion may be sweet news for the re­gion, lo­cal bee­keep­ers have con­cerns, not­ing that

be­fore the news of the amend­ment, the hon­ey in­dus­try was al­ready fac­ing many chal­lenges.

Ac­cord­ing to the bee­keep­ers the Busi­ness Guardian spoke to, the top of the list was the con­tin­ued de­for­esta­tion across the coun­try.

Vet­er­an bee­keep­er, Bernard Ma­habir, point­ed to “in­dis­crim­i­nate log­ging,” which he said has led to vast acreages of trees be­ing cut down, re­sult­ing in few­er and few­er trees for the bees to for­age nec­tar.

Be­yond log­ging, cli­mate change is al­so hav­ing a se­vere im­pact on the lo­cal hon­ey in­dus­try.

Ma­habir said there is too much heat and not enough mois­ture in the ground.

“For the trees to pro­duce the nec­tar, you need pho­to­syn­the­sis. In the se­vere dry sea­son, there is not enough mois­ture in the ground and we are hav­ing too many dry nights so it is dry­ing up the nec­tar,” he ex­plained.

The num­ber of bush­fires across the coun­try has al­so been con­tribut­ing to the chal­lenges the hon­ey in­dus­try faces.

Ma­habir, who is a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion bee­keep­er, start­ed in the in­dus­try in 1972.

His fa­ther was a bee­keep­er and now Ma­habir’s son is al­so a bee­keep­er.

Ma­habir who served as pres­i­dent of the T&T Bee­keep­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion be­tween 1985 and 1995 fur­ther lament­ed that ac­cess roads in­to the forests are a ma­jor prob­lem for farm­ers and the rise of the African­ized bees is forc­ing bee­keep­ers fur­ther away from hous­ing de­vel­op­ments and in­to forest­ed ar­eas.

An­oth­er bee­keep­er, Amit Ram­lochan, who has been in the busi­ness since 2001 al­so echoed that weath­er pat­terns, par­tic­u­lar­ly the dry sea­son, have been neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing the pro­duc­tion of hon­ey.

Il­le­gal hon­ey in T&T?

De­spite the chal­lenges the in­dus­try faces, Ma­habir in­sists bee­keep­ers across the coun­try are meet­ing the de­mand for the prod­uct.

How­ev­er, bee­keep­ers point to the il­le­gal en­try of the prod­uct from Venezuela which has been ham­per­ing busi­ness.

Why the a need for the il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion of a prod­uct that is not in short sup­ply lo­cal­ly?

The price.

Ac­cord­ing to bee­keep­ers, an av­er­age rum bot­tle of lo­cal hon­ey costs be­tween $175 and $200.

A bot­tle of hon­ey il­le­gal­ly im­port­ed from Venezuela costs be­tween $100 and $150.

The av­er­age price of lo­cal hon­ey has gone up by $25 over the last few years, one bee­keep­er told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“It’s a quick fix for the un­scrupu­lous peo­ple out there,” Ma­habir said.

“They are get­ting the hon­ey very cheap in Venezuela and they are sell­ing it for ex­or­bi­tant prices here in Trinidad,” he added.

Mean­while, Ram­lochan added fac­tors such as de­for­esta­tion and log­ging are dri­ving up the costs of pro­duc­tion for lo­cal hon­ey.

“Peo­ple keep cut­ting down the trees and de­vel­op­ing land. It is hard­er for us to pro­duce the amount of hon­ey we used to pro­duce long time. The price of sug­ar has al­so gone up,” he said.

While the price of lo­cal hon­ey is high­er than the il­le­gal­ly im­port­ed one, the qual­i­ty of T&T hon­ey how­ev­er, has long been recog­nised as among the best in the world, with the prod­uct hav­ing won in­ter­na­tion­al awards down the years.

Im­port­ing hon­ey - An in­ter­na­tion­al is­sue

T&T open­ing up its mar­ket to hon­ey im­por­ta­tion is not on­ly a do­mes­tic is­sue.

It’s an in­ter­na­tion­al one.

Over the last two decades, the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU), Cana­da and the US have all banned the im­por­ta­tion of hon­ey.

The ma­jor cul­prit has been Chi­na.

In Jan­u­ary 2021, the Amer­i­can month­ly mag­a­zine, WIRED, cit­ed the rea­sons be­hind such a mass shut-out of Chi­nese hon­ey.

“There, cheap hon­ey and sug­ar syrup are pro­duced on an in­dus­tri­al scale and blend­ed to­geth­er by fraud­sters.

“Bee­keep­ers be­lieve this adul­ter­at­ed hon­ey is re­spon­si­ble for sat­u­rat­ing the mar­ket, crash­ing glob­al prices and de­ceiv­ing mil­lions of cus­tomers,” the re­port stat­ed.

An­tho­ny Teles­ford, a To­bag­on­ian bee­keep­er who has been in the in­dus­try since the 1970s, said he is con­cerned about Chi­nese hon­ey en­ter­ing this coun­try.

“My main con­cern with that is if you find some­body on the is­land who is go­ing to im­port cheap, adul­ter­at­ed hon­ey from Chi­na,” Teles­ford said.

He fur­ther ex­plained, “Grena­di­an peo­ple have been try­ing to sell hon­ey in To­ba­go so this will be their chance to do it, but, we in Trinidad need to put some type of con­trol on it.

“For in­stance, if you have a bee­keep­er in a Caribbean coun­try and they have 1,000 gal­lons of Grena­di­an hon­ey to sell to Trinidad. We have to en­sure he is not buy­ing cheap hon­ey from Chi­na, pack­ag­ing it and send­ing it here as Grena­di­an hon­ey.”

He rec­om­mend­ed that con­trols must be put in place to avoid adul­ter­at­ed Chi­nese hon­ey en­ter­ing the coun­try.

The adul­ter­at­ed hon­ey from Chi­na could in­clude corn syrup, an­tibi­otics or sug­ar, Teles­ford claimed.

He said if im­port­ed hon­ey can be ver­i­fied as com­ing from the Caribbean, he has no prob­lem with amend­ing leg­is­la­tion to lift re­stric­tions on hon­ey im­ports in T&T.

In re­sponse to con­cerns Enill how­ev­er, as­sured that the agen­cies that have re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with­in the ter­ri­to­ries will have the “where­with­al” to en­sure that hon­ey be­ing sold on the Caribbean mar­ket is au­then­tic.

Re­gard­ing the stan­dard of tech­nol­o­gy and equip­ment to meet the re­quire­ments of test­ing for au­then­tic hon­ey, Enill added, “To the best of my knowl­edge there are agen­cies tasked with that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and those agen­cies will be strength­ened to en­sure that there is very strict com­pli­ance be­cause there is a recog­ni­tion to­wards what can oc­cur and we have to pro­tect the Cari­com in­dus­try.”

Prop­er leg­is­la­tion im­per­a­tive

An­oth­er ma­jor con­cern that comes with im­port­ing hon­ey is the po­ten­tial dis­eases that could come with it.

It is one of the ma­jor rea­sons why lo­cal beekepeers have been able to mo­nop­o­lise the in­dus­try.

Dis­eases are al­ready a con­cern for lo­cal bee­keep­ers amid the il­le­gal trade of Venezue­lan hon­ey.

One bee­keep­er who has in­side knowl­edge of how the hon­ey in­dus­try is be­ing dealt with at the State lev­el sound­ed the alarm on Gov­ern­ment’s leg­is­la­tion amend­ment.

“It is not a good thing for the in­dus­try, it is not a good thing for the coun­try and it is not a good thing for the en­vi­ron­ment, and it is not a good thing for the con­sum­ing pub­lic that us­es hon­ey. When you open the mar­ket, if they don’t have prop­er leg­is­la­tion, con­di­tions, and the abil­i­ty to mon­i­tor the con­di­tions, which I know that they don’t have, then any­thing will come in [the coun­try],” the bee­keep­er said.

The con­se­quences, he warned will be more fake hon­ey en­ter­ing the coun­try.

“When that comes in, if we don’t have the ca­pac­i­ty to test hon­ey, which we don’t, and you are con­sum­ing it with chlo­ram­pheni­col and all the oth­er an­tibi­otics, that is go­ing to af­fect the health of the con­sumer. Not to men­tion, if hon­ey comes in with dis­eases, that could be trans­ferred to the bees here and that is what we are try­ing to safe­guard against. That is what the Bee­keep­ing Act has safe­guard­ed Trinidad bees against since 1935.”

Mean­while, for­mer min­is­ter of food pro­duc­tion, land and ma­rine af­fairs un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, Vas­ant Bharath, said the im­por­ta­tion of hon­ey has been a chal­lenge he al­so had to con­front when deal­ing with Cari­com dur­ing his time in of­fice.

“We had dis­cus­sions dur­ing my time to see how we could work with oth­er Cari­com lead­ers to en­sure the hon­ey com­ing in­to Trinidad, if it was al­lowed to come in, would meet cer­tain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion so the bee pop­u­la­tion here would not be in­fect­ed in a way that they could die out,” he said.

In re­sponse to such con­cerns, Enill he be­lieves the fo­cus at this time is “sim­ply Cari­com be­cause the re­gion is op­er­at­ing with a new man­date both in terms of trade and in terms of move­ment for cit­i­zens when it comes to ser­vices - the Cari­com re­gion should have no re­stric­tions.”

Sav­ing bees and bee­keep­ers

Bee­keep­ers feel there is a gen­uine threat to the in­dus­try, and it goes be­yond open­ing up the mar­ket to for­eign im­ports.

Ma­habir said T&T must al­so do its part en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly to save the hon­ey in­dus­try.

He said, “If the Gov­ern­ment con­cen­trates on plant­i­ng na­tive species again, we could boost up. We can’t on­ly con­cen­trate on plant­i­ng pine but al­so the na­tive species that pro­duce hon­ey like sip and ma­hogany and al­so in­te­grate it with fruits so that the an­i­mals will al­so have food to eat. All the things that are high-pro­duc­ing nec­tar plants.”

On the fi­nan­cial side, Bharath said the Gov­ern­ment must move to rev­o­lu­tionise the hon­ey in­dus­try to take this in­ter­na­tion­al qual­i­ty prod­uct to the glob­al stage.

“If we are do­ing any­thing at all in the in­dus­try, we should en­cour­age it to be not just a store but it should be cul­ti­vat­ed on a com­mer­cial ba­sis so that it be­comes more com­pet­i­tive on the economies of scale on which it is be­ing pro­duced and it will al­low us to get back on­to the ex­port mar­kets to high­light the rich qual­i­ty of Trinida­di­an hon­ey,” he sug­gest­ed.

Enill re­mained con­fi­dent the re­spec­tive agen­cies that need to deal with any is­sues emerg­ing from this new era of bee­keep­ing in T&T will be dealt with.

(BOX)

Bee­keep­ing and Bee Prod­ucts Act

There are cer­tain stip­u­la­tions as out­lined in this act, gov­ern­ing the im­por­ta­tion of hon­ey.

These in­clude:

Sec­tion 22 (1) No hon­ey ar­riv­ing in T&T by sea or by air shall be trans­shipped ex­cept as pro­vid­ed in this reg­u­la­tion.

Sec­tion 22 (2) Hon­ey orig­i­nat­ing else­where than in any of the ter­ri­to­ries in the Wind­ward and Lee­ward Is­lands shall not be trans­shipped in T&T.

Hon­ey orig­i­nat­ing in any of the above-men­tioned ter­ri­to­ries may be trans­shipped in the har­bour of Port-of-Spain un­der the au­thor­i­ty of a per­mit is­sued by the in­spec­tor and sub­ject to the fol­low­ing pro­vi­sions of this reg­u­la­tion.

Sec­tion 22 (3) No hon­ey shall be brought or kept ashore or with­in one mile of the shore dur­ing trans­ship­ment or pend­ing load­ing on the out­go­ing ves­sel.

Sec­tion 22 (7) No hon­ey ar­riv­ing in T&T in any ves­sel or air­craft from places over­seas whether for trans­ship­ment or not shall in any cir­cum­stances be brought ashore from such ves­sel or re­moved from such air­craft on a land aero­drome.