From: soilfoodweb@aol.com
Date: Tue Feb 18 2003 - 10:47:26 EST
Folks, let's get one thing straight right now. Honey is not an antibiotic in the sense that is meant by the pharmaceutical industry.
What is an antibiotic? Be careful on this, or you will have the EPA requiring listing of honey as a pesticide or inhibitory substance.
Antibiotics have a specific chemical action on the enzymatic or membrane function of another organism.
Even though the word antibiotic, meaning against life, may suggest that anything that inhibits another organism is an antibiotic, in fact, from a legal point of view, we mean something much more specific.
Honey, like any other material that at high concentration can "suck-up" water, and thus kill things by simple osmotic shock, is NOT an antibiotic as we mean antibiotic in the pharmaceutical sense.
If you want to claim antibiotic mechanisms for honey, then salt would also be an antibiotic, as would most inorganic fertilizers.
Please, be clear about what the mechanism of a pharmaceutical antibiotic is, and what the mechanism of something producing an osmotic shock actually is.
If you want to claim antibiotic abilities for honey, then demonstrate that there are bio-active compounds in the honey that act to destroy membrane function, or complex enzymes so the enzymes do not function. If honey contains materials that disrupt the enzymes involved in respiration, or such-like, I have yet to see proof of such material.
Do not confuse osmotic shock effects with pharmaceutical antibiotic interactions. It would be much better NOT to move natural compounds into the world of EPA registration. Please, don't go there.
Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com
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