Most of the cheaper honey you can buy in the EU is imported from China, and is fake, made from glucose syrup. The EU has tried to "regulate", but chinese producers don't care, no one except consumer groups and beekeeper unions pay for tests.
Maybe in ten years, when most EU beekeepers will have thrown the towel and moved to other occupations, the EU will act and forbid imports. But until then, well eat overpriced glucose syrup.
If fraud as blatant and old is tolerated, what do you think happens with meat, where controls are much harder if not impossible when dealing with things such as animal wellness?
Yep that is more and more the problem. Regulations are made "for show". Governments don't check them, don't enforce them (except extremely selectively), and companies are learning to just ignore them. But it's not just a problem for imports.
(note that the EU has already perfected this, as it is now basically standard for EU legislation to have rules about enforcement that always boil down to only allowing the EU commission to enforce legislation, or not enforce it. In other words: you, and even local governments, cannot use the courts to get compliance)
1) activists and lobbyists get what they want ... or they think so
2) governments get the votes they need without destroying the economy because political parties can lie about their "achievements"
3) companies (farms, what remains of industry) get what they want
Of course this will lead to a total disaster, sooner or later. Probably sooner. One where millions of lives will be very negatively affected.
Free trade is making this worse. Of course, China has always done this. In China, the law doesn't matter, only what the party says at the moment does. And even that is assuming there is zero truth to the constant claims that China encourages fake medicine production and even drug production for export.
In the US, this is now more and more the case as well. For example, xAI simply totally violated environmental laws (among others [1]) to get their datacenter operational and operating at all. Which, of course, really pushes their competition to do the same. The punishment? "Never do it again". Of course, it is essentially inconceivable that they're complying with the ruling (the datacenter is currently running and has not received extra grid power. In other words: the illegal generators are running right now despite the ruling, not only that but the second datacenter also has at least 45 illegal generators)
Maybe in ten years, when most EU beekeepers will have thrown the towel and moved to other occupations, the EU will act and forbid imports. But until then, well eat overpriced glucose syrup.
If fraud as blatant and old is tolerated, what do you think happens with meat, where controls are much harder if not impossible when dealing with things such as animal wellness?