high fructose corn syrup

My post yesterday on honeybees' colony collapse disorder prompted my wife Sally to point out that I'd missed an intriguing post on the same subject by my friend, the brilliant investigative reporter Andrew Schneider.

Andrew reports on new research that points to beekeepers' use of high-fructose corn sweetener as a possible culprit in the die-off  of something like half the honeybees used for commercial pollination of crops in this country.

It seems that a toxin can be produced when high fructose corn sweetener is manufactured. As the abastract of the study just published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry points out:

In the United States, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has become a sucrose replacement for honey bees and has widespread use as a sweetener in many processed foods and beverages for human consumption. It is utilized by commercial beekeepers as a food for honey bees for several reasons . . .  Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is a heat-formed contaminant and is the most noted toxin to honey bees. Currently, there are no rapid field tests that would alert beekeepers of dangerous levels of HMF in HFCS or honey.

The study (PDF) mentions that the corn syrup products are used to feed bees to start brood production in the spring, when the bees are being transported, and when nectar sources are not plentiful (such as in the fall, presumably.) Recall, though, that the bee die-offs are going on primarily in the fall and winter. So, why don't the bees dies in the spring and the summer when they're eating the stuff?

Like the other explanations, this could be just a part of the picture.

Another day, and we once again feel compelled to praise independent news media. To wit: Freelancer Melinda Wenner is out with a story in Mother Jones that says the federal government tried to obscure the findings of a federal scientist who found traces of toxic mercury in high fructose corn syrup.

HFCS is, of course, the sweetener that has replaced sugar in a bunch of processed foods made by the likes of Smucker's, Quaker, Hershey's and Kraft, as well as lesser-known food producers.

The researcher, Renee Dufault of the Food and Drug Administration, had common food products tested for mercury. She was suspicious because she had learned that mercury is used in some plants that produce lye, which in turn is used to separate corn starch from the kernel in the process of making corn syrup.

Sure enough, the tests showed mercury in the food. Dufault, though, was told in no uncertain terms not to pursue this line of inquiry. FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek justified the agency's decision to halt the research by saying agency officals doubted "that there was any evidence of a risk."

The MoJo article describes what happened next:

At first, Dufault was reluctant to pursue the matter. But eventually, she became frustrated enough to try to publish the findings herself. She had her 20 original samples retested; mercury was found in nearly half of them.