| I may be placing my trust in the wrong company, but, I sort of
| trust Costco that they're not selling Chinese honey.
|

Why would you trust that? If it's highly refined
honey then even if Costco is honest they have no
way of confirming the source. Since it's store
brand it's likely that they buy it from a big wholesale
distributor, which may very well deal in tanker ships
that arrive and pump their stock into giant holding
tanks, to then be sold by the tanker-truck-load to
retailers or brand name honey packagers. That's the
problem with store brand. It's also an increasing
problem with international commerce.

I saw something
recently about olive oil scams, and junk olive oil being
shipped through Greece just so it could get a Greek
label. I saw another article about how much fish sold is
not the fish they say it is. A scientist was testing the
DNA. One case was a fish sandwich shack in Florida
with a sign saying the fish was local. The fish sandwiches
turned out to be fresh water giant catfish from Vietnam.
(Agent orange, anyone?) When asked about the sign
saying the fish was local, the proprietor said something
like, "It is local. I buy it from the guy up the street."

If you want to trust there needs to be some basis
for that. If you buy Ed's wildflower honey from Ed's
Honey Farm in Elmira, NY, and Ed provides a way to
contact him, as well as a website, then you *might*
be able to trust Ed. If Costco deserved your trust
they'd know about the honey they sell, they'd tell you,
and they'd make sure the honey producer was clearly
credited on the label. The fact that it's store brand
indicates that the producer is not taking responsibility
*and* that Costco is confident you don't care about
that.

| https://i.imgur.com/dZ6B5vm.gif
|
Sorry, I can't see images on that site.

| But the other half of the story is what's wrong with the Chinese
| filtered honey versus the Costco filtered honey? I don't know.
|

It might be watered down. It might contain toxins.
And the Costco honey might be the Chinese honey.
Personally I'd assume it *is*. they target people looking
for bargains who don't ask questions when they have the
proverbial 50% off stereos that fell off the back of a
truck. That's the perfect venue for Chinese honey. The
only question would be how many laundering levels would
Costco want in place in order to accept it. As noted above,
I would guess that they very well may have no way of
knowing exactly what their direct supplier is selling.