Development Ministry officials are to start urgent inspections on Greek honey products, after tests revealed that over half the country’s main brands contained high levels of a poisonous chemical, the government said yesterday.

Deputy Development Minister Yiannis Papathanassiou told a press conference that all products found to be over the European Union-approved ceiling for parabichlorobenzene — used by beekeepers to kill a kind of moth that can attack hives in storage — would be withdrawn.

This followed the revelation that 57.9 percent of samples from 38 Greek honey brands tested by the Democritos Institute were over the EU limit of 10 micrograms per liter. The tests followed the detection in February, by Cypriot authorities, of high levels of the chemical in Greek honey. But Papathanassiou said the EU limit was just for the purpose of detecting the chemical, and was not a danger threshold.