The Bee Products Standards Council (BPSC) is working on some very significant problems that will begin to impact on many beekeepers because of market rejections of New Zealand honey.

The BPSC needs your strong support if these problems are to be addressed.

If you have been affected by a market rejection, please report it (http://www.foodsafety.govt.nz/industry/exporting/export-non-conformances...) so that the BPSC can gauge the economic impact and put priority on solving these problems.

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A recent US study showed that three-quarters of the honey samples tested had been ultra-filtered. This means that all the pollen in the honey has been removed so you can't tell where it comes from. In fact it might not be honey at all, just a sugary solution. So what's happening here in New Zealand?

Well we've tested 10 honeys from the supermarket with Dr Ian Raine of GNS Science and we're looking at the results.

The Bee Products Standards Council (BPSC) met on Thursday the 8th of September, 2011, in Wellington.

The Chairman welcomed the new members appointed by the NBA. Following the retirement of Jane Lorimer from the BPSC, the NBA appointed Fiona O’Brien and David McMillan and in the process stood down Young Mee Yoon. Young Mee’s scientific qualifications and expertise saw her appointed back to the BPSC by Federated Farmers Bees.

When considering substances that may contaminate honey, the following definitions should be used to consider the implications.

The New Zealand/Australian Food Standard definition for Honey
Honey means the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of blossoms or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which honey bees collect, transform and combine with specific substances of their own, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature.

Click here to read the full Codex Standard for Honey

The meeting was attended by Jim Edwards (Chairman), John Hartnell, Peter Bray, Allen McCaw, Steve Lyttle, Mary Anne Thomason, Young Mee Yoon, Jim Sim, Sheryl Tuck, Mike Clear and John Reeve. Visitors were Daniel Paul and Malcolm Garnham from CatalystNZ. Apologies were received from Philip Cropp and Jane Lorimer.

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Massey University will provide the science to help grow the medicinal Manuka honey industry in New Zealand 16-fold to near $1 billion.

The research will develop the husbandry techniques to support the emerging practice of Manuka plantation. It will help improve the reliability of supply and boost yields so that landowners and beekeepers can meet the growing demand for medicinal Manuka honey.

MAF Food Safety periodically asks for feedback on food safety issues that affect consumers and the food industry. You can make a submission (by post, email or fax) before the closing date. MAF Food Safety analyses all submissions and considers how they might be included in final decisions.

The new Tutin Standard is seeing a lot of test results coming into MAF to go into our database. These results will provide vital information that can feed into a later standard review, which could see a significant decrease of the areas where testing or other precautionary measures need to be applied.

MAF has become aware that some beekeepers think Option 2 provides a loophole from testing because of the way it is worded. It has been suggested that it may only be necessary to place supers onto hives between 1 July and 31 December to claim a low risk harvest date, rather than ensuring supers are also removed by 31 December. Such an interpretation of Option 2 was not the intention nor was it the proposal consulted on last year prior to the issue of the Standard.

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) will relaunch its industry-focused website on 27 January.

The new website - foodsafety.govt.nz - is aimed at food businesses that produce, sell, export or import food. It is designed to help these businesses navigate regulatory and market access requirements.