Opinion by: Fraser Edwards, co-founder and CEO, Cheqd
Brutal honesty has its place, especially when confronting discomfort, so here’s one that can’t be sweetened with honey: 96% of imported honey in the UK is fake! Tests found that 24 of 25 jars were suspicious or didn’t meet regulatory standards.
Self-sovereign identity (SSI) can fix this.
The UK Food Standards Agency and the European Commission both urge reform to tackle this concern by creating a robust traceability database within supply chain networks to ensure consumer transparency and trust. Data, however, is not the problem. The issue is people tampering with it.
This is not the first time products have been revealed to be inauthentic, with the Honey Authenticity Network highlighting that one-third of all honey products were fake in 2020, a fraudulent industry amounting to 3.4 billion euros ($3.65 million) of counterfeit goods entering the EU in 2023, as reported by the European Commission.
What is EMA, and how does it affect honey?
Economically motivated adulteration (EMA) involves intentionally substituting valuable ingredients for less expensive products such as sweeteners or low-quality oil. This practice leads to severe economic and health complications — and, in some cases, disease — due to the poisonous additives from substitute products.
The adulteration often involves creating an ultra-diluted blend containing minimal nutritional value, and counterfeiters call it… honey.
Fraudsters dilute the product with high fructose corn syrup or increase the thickness with starch or gelatine. These adulterants closely mimic honey’s chemical profile, making it extremely difficult to detect with traditional tests such as isotope ratio mass spectrometry. Fake honey lacks the essential enzymes that give real honey its flavor and nutrients. To make matters worse, honey’s characteristics vary based on nectar sources, the harvest season, geography and more.
Some companies filter out pollen content, a key identifier of a honey’s geographical origin, before exporting it to intermediary countries like Vietnam or India to further obfuscate the process. Once this is done, the products are brought to supermarket shelves and labeled with false certifications to command higher prices. This tactic exploits the fact that many regulatory bodies lack the means to verify every shipment.
The hidden cost of food fraud
The supply chain is profoundly fractured, as a jar of honey passes six to eight key points in the supply chain before it arrives on the shelves in the UK. Current practices make authenticity verification extremely difficult. Coupled with the inefficient paper-based bureaucracy that makes it hard to track origin obscuration attempts in intermediary countries, we cannot reliably determine the true extent of food fraud.
One Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimate suggests that at least 1% of the global food industry, potentially up to $40 billion per year, is affected — and it could be even higher.
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Fraudulent practices don’t just harm consumers — they destroy beekeepers’ livelihoods, flooding the market and destroying profitability for legitimate traders. Ziya Sahin, a Turkish beekeeper, explained the frustration with food fraud regulation:
“Our beekeepers are angry, and they ask why we’re not doing something to stop it. But we have no authority to inspect,” he said. “I’m not even allowed to ask street sellers whether their honey is real.”
While there’s a growing appetite for more reliable testing and stricter enforcement, solutions are lagging. The EU’s latest attempt to fix this? Digital product passports are designed to track honey’s origins and composition, but they are already being criticized as ineffective and easy to manipulate, ultimately leaving the door open for fraud to continue.
EU passports are an ineffective solution
The European Union’s Digital Product Passport aims to tackle this by enhancing traceability and transparency in its supply chains. By 2030, all goods in the EU must have a digital product passport containing detailed information on the product’s lifecycle, origins and environmental effects.
While the idea sounds promising, it fails to recognize the extent to which fraudsters can forge certificates and obscure origins by passing products through intermediary countries alongside officials who turn a blind eye.
At the core of this issue is trust. Despite history showing that these rules can and will be bent, we rely on governments to implement laws and regulations. Technology, on the other hand, is agnostic and doesn’t care about money or incentives.
This is the fundamental flaw of the EU’s approach — a system built on human oversight that is vulnerable to the corruption these supply chains are already known for.
Self-sovereign identity (SSI) for products
Many people are already aware of the scalability trilemma, but the trust triangle is a key concept in SSI that defines how trust is established between issuers, holders and verifiers. It makes fraud much more challenging because every product must be backed by a verifiable credential from a trusted source to prove it’s real.
Issuers, like manufacturers or certification bodies, create and sign verifiable credentials that attest to a product’s authenticity. The holder, typically the product owner, stores and presents these credentials when required. Verifiers — such as retailers, customs officials or consumers — can check the credentials’ validity without relying on a central authority.
Verifiable credentials are protected by cryptography. If someone tries to sell fake products, their missing or invalid credentials will immediately reveal the fraud.
Government reforms must extend beyond current regulatory oversight and explore the approach outlined in the trust trilemma to safeguard supply chains from widespread adulteration and fraud.
SSI provides the underlying infrastructure necessary to reliably track the identity of products across multiple bodies, standards and regions. By enabling tamper-proof, end-to-end traceability in every single product — whether a jar of honey or a designer handbag — SSI ensures sufficient validators confirm the data is correct to tackle fraud and obfuscation attempts.
SSI also empowers consumers to independently verify products without relying on third-party databases. Buyers can scan the product to authenticate its origin and history directly via the cryptographic certifications confirmed by the validators to further reduce the risk of misinformation even if it reaches the shelves. This would also help reduce corruption and inefficiencies, as many checks are made on paper, which can be easily altered and is a slow process.
As honey fraud methods continue to expand, so do these products’ harm to consumers and local businesses. Steps taken to tackle these methods must thus also broaden. The EU’s Digital Product Passports aim to improve traceability; but unfortunately, they fall short of fraudsters’ sophistication. Implementation of SSI is a necessary step to effectively address the extent fraudsters take to ensure their product arrives on shelves.
Opinion by: Fraser Edwards, co-founder and CEO, Cheqd.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Mobile phone footage allegedly showing the moment the famous Sycamore Gap tree crashed to the ground to the sound of a chainsaw has been played to jurors.
Groundworker Daniel Graham, 39, and mechanic Adam Carruthers, 32, each deny two counts of criminal damage to the tree and to Hadrian’s Wall overnight on 28 September 2023.
Jurors at Newcastle Crown Court heard the tree was a “totemic” feature of Northumberland and was part of a place “much loved by many thousands of people”.
Adam Carruthers outside court. Pic: PA
The video clip lasting two minutes and 40 seconds was recovered from Graham’s phone and played to the court twice – once showing the dark, raw footage, and a second time after it had been enhanced by a police specialist.
Police analyst Amy Sutherland told the court the video was in the download section of Graham’s phone, which was taken from his jacket pocket.
In the enhanced black and white version, with audio of wind blowing and a chainsaw buzzing, a figure can be seen working at the trunk of the tree, before it finally crashes to the ground.
Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, said the original video was enhanced by changing the contrast, putting a border around the frame and brightening the film “so it could be seen more clearly”.
The prosecution alleges that the two friends travelled to the location in the pitch black during Storm Agnes and used a chainsaw to fell the sycamore, which then crashed on to Hadrian’s Wall.
The damage caused was valued at £622,191 for the tree and £1,144 to the Roman wall, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site.
Thought to be the last picture of the Sycamore Gap in its famous position, taken on 27 September 2023. Pic: CPS
The court has heard that Graham, of Carlisle, and Adam Carruthers, of Wigton, Cumbria, swapped messages after word spread of the tree being felled.
A statement by Tony Wilmott, a senior archaeologist with Historic England, said he produced a seven-page report into the damage caused to Hadrian’s Wall.
He said the Sycamore Gap name was coined in the 1980s, and over the decades it has become one of Northumberland’s most appreciated features.
He said: “Its unmistakable profile has been repeated in many media and because of this it has become totemic.
“It has become a place of marriage proposals, family visits and even the location of ashes to be spread.
“The place is much loved by many thousands of people.”
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The court heard a statement from archaeologist and inspector for Historic England, Lee McFarlane, that some of the stones in Hadrian’s Wall were damaged when the tree was felled.
The wall and the tree belong to the National Trust.
The trial continues.
At a midnight briefing in Kentish Town police station in north London, officers are shown a photograph of Danny Downes, a large white man with a wispy beard, who has been linked to a shooting in the area.
Swabs on a bullet casing found at the scene have come back with a match to his DNA.
Intelligence suggests he keeps the gun at home.
In the room are MO19 officers, colleagues of Martyn Blake, the firearms officer who was charged with murder after opening fire on the job.
Chris Kaba
Blake was acquitted of murdering Chris Kaba last October, but with Wednesday’s police watchdog decision to launch a gross misconduct hearing against Blake, the case still lingers over his unit.
Police officers don’t get paid anything extra for carrying a gun – what they get is the dangerous callouts, and a huge responsibility strapped to their shoulders.
The Kentish town operation, like any shift, is another chance when shots could be fired and split-second risk assessments made in the moment could be scrutinised for months, even years, careers could go on hold with suspended officers publicly named as they go on trial.
They could end up in prison for the most serious of crimes.
“Why risk it?” many asked themselves during the Blake trial, and at one point, it was reported that up to 300 officers had turned in their firearms permits, allowing them to carry weapons.
The burden of high accountability is what a firearms officer carries with them in their holster, and many would argue, not least the victims’ families of police shootings, that is how it should be; the power to kill in the name of the state must be accompanied by the highest scrutiny.
Armed Met Police officers receive a briefing before a dawn raid to arrest Danny Downes
‘Crush the spirit of good officers’
Some campaigners feel they are under-scrutinised and have a habit of being acquitted for their actions, but, after the Martyn Blake verdict the Met Commissioner, Mark Rowley, said the system for holding police to account was “broken,” adding “the more we crush the spirit of good officers – the less they can fight crime”.
In a statement on Wednesday, Assistant Commissioner Lawrence Taylor said: “We know another lengthy process will fall heavily on the shoulders of NX121 (Blake’s code name) and more widely our firearms officers who continue to bravely and tirelessly police the streets of London every day to protect the public.”
Chris Kaba’s family said they welcomed the IOPC’s decision, adding: “We hope this leads to him being removed from the Met Police. What Martyn Blake did was deeply wrong.”
In the Kentish Town briefing room, plans for the operation are set out: room layouts, entry points, cordons, risk assessments.
Then Derek Caroll, a specialist tactical firearms commander, tells the room why it is proportional that the planned dawn raid to arrest Downes should involve officers who carry guns.
Derek Caroll, a specialist tactical firearms commander, during a briefing ahead of a dawn raid
Caroll said: “Clearly, he has used the firearm in a public place, so that’s the reason armed officers have been deployed… the subject these officers are going to go up against has either immediate possession of a firearm or access to a firearm.
“Because there is a gun outstanding there is a potential risk – he has a propensity to fire the weapon.”
The point seems obvious and laboured, but the case of Martyn Blake and other shootings has made it clear that this stuff needs to be spelled out as often as possible.
Sergeant Blake had been on a similar mission to these officers when he shot 23-year-old Chris Kaba.
The death of Kaba in September 2022
He and other officers were involved in stopping an Audi Q8 used in a shooting in Brixton.
Arguably, there are more variables trying to stop a car than in a dawn house raid where suspects are usually asleep.
With car stops, they can see you coming, it’s not always clear who is driving, and the vehicle itself can be used as a weapon.
All of this played out in the attempted hard stop of the Audi Q8 in September 2022.
The Met Police’s hard stop of an Audi driven by Chris Kaba in September 2022
The scene of where Chris Kaba was shot in Brixton
An unmarked police car was following the vehicle when it turned a corner and Blake’s marked vehicle blocked its path.
Officers didn’t know Kaba was driving the car, and with armed officers now on foot, Kaba tried to ram his way out.
Seconds later, he was shot by a single round through the windscreen.
The police watchdog referred Sergeant Blake to the CPS, and he was charged with murder.
In court, he argued that he had opened fire because it was his genuinely held belief that the driver posed an imminent threat to life and in October last year, the jury found him not guilty.
After the verdict, it emerged that days before he was shot, Chris Kaba himself was alleged to have shot someone in a nightclub, chasing his victim outside, shooting him again.
‘Gung-ho’ behaviour
Equality activist Stafford Scott believes the killing of Chris Kaba is part of a pattern of what he called “gung-ho” behaviour from Metropolitan Police officers against black men.
He feels the hard stop was an unnecessarily “reckless” tactic.
Sky News’s Jason Farrell (left) speaks to Equality activist Stafford Scott
He lists other shooting victims such as Jermaine Baker and Mark Duggan and blames “institutional racism” within the force – pointing to the matching findings of the McPherson report of 1999 and the more recent Lousie Casey Inquiry in 2023, which both made damning conclusions about police racism.
The prosecution in Blake’s case didn’t argue that racism played a part in the shooting, but having watched the trial, Scott says it left many questions.
“What we have again is this notion of ‘honestly held belief’ and that’s why we are going to the European courts because we won’t get justice in this system – ‘honestly held belief’ must be rational,” he says.
“And let’s remember there was all this stuff in the media afterwards about what Chris Kaba did before he was shot, but at the time Martyn Blake shot Chris Kaba he didn’t even know it was Chris Kaba behind the wheel. He didn’t know who it was.”
These arguments, and what happened at the scene, will again be played out in a misconduct hearing, which requires a lower threshold of proof than criminal proceedings and could lead to Blake being sacked from the force.
Like tiptoeing armadillos
In the operation in Kentish Town, for the officers strapping on their Sig MCXs and holstering their Glocks, the last thing they want is to have to use them.
They are trained to only open fire if they believe there is a risk to life, and a large part of their training is also in first aid, be that on victims they find at the scene – or on someone who they have felt compelled to shoot themselves.
Armed police officers ready their weapons before a dawn raid
It is a surreal scene as these heavily tooled-up officers in helmets and body armour stalk through the everyday scene of a dark council estate then, like tiptoeing armadillos, they quietly shuffle up the stairwell with their forcible entry tool kit.
The door is busted down in seconds to the shouts of “armed police!” and after loud negotiations at gunpoint, the highly overweight figure of Downes is brought out and cuffed in his boxer shorts.
The man is so large, it leads to serious debriefing questions afterwards about what to do if a subject is too big to get out of the door and even taking him downstairs is done by bum shuffle.
“There was a knife in a sheet under one of the beds,” says one of the arresting officers to his commander, “and then the firearm found down the side of the sofa, which is quite readily available to the subject.”
“We got him, no shots fired, and we can be nothing but happy with that,” responds the Commander.
The moment armed police smashed in the door of where Downes was staying in a dawn raid before arresting him
The arrest of Downes
Success is ‘where shots aren’t fired’
Afterwards, Commander Caroll tells Sky News: “It’s a satisfaction getting the gun back – but unfortunately, there’s guns out there and we are doing these jobs very regularly.
“We get a gun off the street. We get the person arrested and as with every firearms operation – every successful firearms operation, for the Met and for the country – is one where shots aren’t fired.”
Out of 4,000 operations a year, shots are only fired once or twice, but whenever they are, questions will always be asked.
There is a balance between rigorous accountability for the officer, a process of justice for bereaved families and the impact it may have on policing if officers fear their names could become known in criminal networks after they shot a gang member or if someone’s “honestly held belief” is not enough to keep them from jail.
Campaigners and members of Chris Kaba’s family say the Blake verdict shows that officers can kill without consequence – his colleagues say he has already paid a heavy price for doing what he is trained to do.
When they are not on operations to seize guns, MO19 officers patrol London poised to deal with stabbings, shootings and terrorist attacks – there’s little doubt the public wants them to keep doing that.
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Downes, 23, has since pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of harm and possession of a Class B substance.
He is due to be sentenced in June.
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