Steve Levitt

So they don't have the resources or the incentives to go out and fight.

And making it even more complicated is I suspect that many U.S.

food producers that use honey as an input, breakfast cereals, yogurt, granola bars, breads, they don't really care so much about the sanctity of honey.

They want some honey flavor.

They want it really cheap.

And they wouldn't say it loudly or publicly, but they're probably not too troubled if adulterated honey is the input they're using to their product.

It seems to me that another sensible policy approach, thinking in terms of incentives, would be to make it more financially rewarding for private entities to try to identify food fraud.

One example of this is the government has used something called the False Claims Act to pay massive rewards to individuals and companies that uncover trade fraud.

Do you think it would make sense policy-wise to go even further in the direction of offering bounties to people who identify food fraud and whether they're doing that through data science or chemistry or however they're figuring out that people are breaking the rules?

The policy picture is complicated, the incentives are misaligned, and the solutions are slow.

Which brought me back to Chris Hyatt, who first brought my attention to the honey business.

I wanted to know something simple.

In spite of all the challenges his industry is facing, does he enjoy what he does?

Well, that was remarkable.

I can't believe you can summarize your methods so effectively.

The Freakonomics Radio Network.

The hidden side of everything.

Hey, Dubner.

How are you doing?

I'm good.