At the 8th International Food Safety Congress held on 9-10 May, Balparmak Chairman Özen Altıparmak spoke as a panelist at the "Food Sector Discussing Food Safety" panel. Altıparmak said, "As Balparmak, our greatest responsibility to our consumers is food safety, transparency and traceability. For this reason, we are engaged in serious combat against honey fraud and have been providing natural honey to our consumers for exactly 44 years."
- The 8th International Food Safety Congress brought the food sector together on 9-10 May. Honey, identified in a report released by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as the 6th food product most easily subject to fraudulent production, was one of the important topics of the congress. Balparmak Chairman Özen Altıparmak delivered a presentation at the congress. Altıparmak was accompanied by Balparmak Research and Development and Quality Director Dr. Emel Damarlı and Balparmak Analytical Research and Development Manager İsmail Emir Akyıldız, who presented on "A Comprehensive Review of Current Imitation and Adulteration Practices in Honey and Analytical Approaches Commonly Used in Fraud Detection."
They analyze whether honey is fraudulent using advanced technology
In his presentation, where Özen Altıparmak emphasized that he views food safety as a fundamental element of branding, he stated: "We are fighting against uncontrolled honey sold openly in our country or products on shelves with insufficient oversight. As part of this effort, we continuously develop ourselves from a scientific perspective. For example; with the new technological investment we made in our Balparmak Research and Development Centre in 2022, we detect and report products made from sugar syrups such as corn, beet, rice and agave that are a very common type of fraudulent honey and can only be uncovered through detailed analysis using advanced technology. Additionally, we are able to detect food colorings and enzyme additives added to fraudulent honey produced from these syrups to give the impression of real honey in a highly accurate and precise format. As Balparmak, for exactly 44 years, we have been able to detect through analyses in our laboratories whether honey is fraudulent and we only provide natural honey and bee products to tables. However, for the detected fraud method to gain scientific merit and be published, it must be reportable using scientific methods. Today, thanks to the intensive work of our 20 engineers specialized in the field alongside our new technological equipment, we are in a position to share the methods we have developed with the entire world. The matter that brings pride for our country is that these important methods developed in the scope of combating imitation and adulteration (fraud) in bee products were first discovered worldwide by our Balparmak Research and Development centre."
Balparmak puts products on tables of which it is 100 percent certain of their naturalness
Altıparmak conveyed that they collect bee products from beekeepers across Turkey throughout the year and put them through a 4-stage analysis process at "Balparmak APILAB," Turkey's first and Europe's most comprehensive equivalent four specialist Honey and Bee Products Laboratory, testing naturalness in at least 100 parameters, and that they put products on tables of which they are 100 percent certain of their naturalness based on the results of these analyses conducted using advanced methods.
Emphasizing that safe food must be nutrient-rich, physically, chemically and microbiologically clean and undamaged, Altıparmak stated: "Food must be obtained, processed and preserved in environments that will not affect human health or create environmental problems. In this sense, compliance with necessary rules and implementation of measures in the production, processing, storage, transport and distribution stages of food is of great importance. Consumers are unable to know whether food products entering their homes are produced in compliance with food safety. Yet transparency and traceability should be the first rule in food safety. Through our 'TRACEABILITY' project launched in 2015, as Balparmak, we encourage consumers to question the products they receive. With 'traceability' we provide our consumers with the ability to verify their products and access analysis reports. We ensure that our consumers are certain of the naturalness and purity of our products by scanning the QR code on the packaging with their mobile phones even while the product is still on store shelves. We want consumers to understand the contents of the product they take home and place on their table, whether the product has the quality values it should have, which region it comes from, what pollen varieties it contains, the plant-flower source, in other words whether the product is pure and natural."
Balparmak supports the sustainability of beekeeping profession with beekeeping academy
Özen Altıparmak stated in his presentation that he views transparency and traceability as a responsibility toward his consumers, and expressed that they also have responsibilities toward bees and beekeepers. Altıparmak noted that the Balparmak Beekeeping Academy, launched in 2018, was established for this reason, saying: "We aim to support bringing women and youth in rural development areas into beekeeping and supporting the sustainability of the beekeeping profession. So far, we have succeeded in reaching 700 people through face-to-face training and more than 700 through online training with women and youth. In our trainings, in addition to producing value-added bee products more efficiently and with higher quality, through modern beekeeping techniques training we strive to correct 'commonly believed misconceptions' aimed at increasing efficiency and quality in beekeeping. Through our trainings, we aim to encourage the beekeeping profession among younger generations and increase household incomes."
