In the last few days, honey has attracted huge interests and we decided to write a detailed note on it.
We will use European standards as two years back we worked with a European group who wanted and eventually passed our honey but crisis arose when they wanted 120 tonnes per quarter and we were not able to give even 20 tonnes /per year. So all references are to EU standards. We passed our samples through the designated laboratory in Chennai and European buyer labs to follow the necessary approval protocols.
AUTHENTICITY OF PRODUCTION
The major concern of honey quality is to ensure that honey is authentic with respect to the legislative requirements. The Codex Alimentarius and other international standards forbid adding any ingredients to honey or removing any of its natural parts. Honey shall not have any objectionable matter, flavour, aroma or taint from foreign matter during its processing and storage. The honey shall not have begun to ferment or effervesce. You must keep all the pollen and natural parts of the honey unless you are cleaning out unwanted dirt.You must not heat or process honey so much that you change its natural goodness or lower its quality.
Fermentation
Harvesting honey with a too high-water content leads to spoilage by fermentation, resulting in a product with an off-taste, high levels of yeast, glycerol, butanediol.
Heat defects
The use of excessive heat for liquefaction or pasteurization of honey has adverse effects on honey quality, i.e., loss of volatile compounds, accumulation of HMF and reduction of invertase and diastase activities. Quantification of HMF content and enzyme activities are useful tools in detecting heat induced defects in honey but cannot be used for the determination of botanical or geographical origin.
Honey filtration
Honey should not be strained with a mesh size smaller than 0.2 mm in order to prevent pollen removal. On the other hand, the shortly revised Codex Alimentarius Honey Standard (Codex Alimentarius Commission 2001) and EU Directive relating to honey (EU Council 2002) allow a removal of pollen if it is unavoidable for the removal of foreign matter. Such honey should be labelled as ?filtered?. As microscopical pollen analysis is still the most important tool for the determination of botanical and geographical origin of honey the removal of pollen by filtration will make authenticity testing much more difficult, if not impossible.
Adulteration by sweeteners
As a natural product of a relatively high price, honey has been a target for adulteration for a long time. Addition of sweeteners, feeding the bees during the nectar flow or extracting combs containing bee feed may adulteration of honey. The following sweeteners have been detected in adulterated honeys: sugar syrups and molasses inverted by acids or enzymes from corn, sugar cane, sugar beet and syrups of natural origin such as maple. Recently, there has been a major adulteration problem, predominantly concerning honey from the Far East.
Organic honey, raw or unheated honey
Europe has created special rules to make sure people produce organic honey in a safe and natural way. As with all organically produced food, the control of organic honey implies only the beekeeping procedures and not the honey quality.Tests cannot prove honey is organic, but finding medicine left behind by vets shows a sample is not truly organic. The label ?natural? honey is misleading, since honey is natural by definition.
Fresh honey has a very low hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) level and shows a natural level of enzyme activity. Labels like “fresh” or “raw” mean you haven’t heated the honey, and it should keep a very low HMF level. There are also proposals that the HMF level of raw, unheated honey should be below 15 mg/kg, while the invertase activity should be higher than 10 Hadorn units.
METHODS FOR TESTING OF AUTHENTICITY OF HONEY PRODUCTION
Experts use tests like pollen analysis, sugar checks, and moisture levels to find low-quality honey before using more advanced tools. At present the determination of each parameter requires another analytical method and is thus very time consuming.In the future, infrared spectroscopy will let people test honey quality in minutes, though India does not have this yet.
Honey fermentation
Harvesting of honey with high moisture content, or subsequent addition of water can result in honey fermentation and spoilage. You can test for honey spoilage by counting yeast under a microscope or by measuring glycerol, butanediol, and ethanol levels.
Adulteration by addition of sugars
Microscopes and isotope tests reveal hidden cane or corn sugar, while unusual sugar chains expose the presence of corn syrup. Special light tests now detect hidden beet and cane sugars, catching fake syrups that once passed even with 75% adulteration.
And now what can one do:
Always very important question
Choose a knowledgeable and honest supplier you can trust, because clever technology always finds new ways to hide the truth.
And I can only recommend our honey —though in limited quantity bit costlier but at least we put in efforts to know what we are offering.
Research Done By TEJASVANI GROUP