Is pure natural, 100% unadditive honey really pure? Can the new method of honey marking really make honey marking practical?

The Food and Drug Administration (Simplified Food and Drug Administration) announced by the Food and Drug Administration of the Ministry of Health and Welfare (Simplified Food and Drug Administration) will be implemented on July 1, 2023, but the relevant inspection methods in practice cannot clearly measure whether honey products meet the standards. How the new regulations should be implemented is confusing.

Is the honey that is pure and natural, 100% unadditive or "not purely cut" on the market really pure? Can the people distinguish the true feelings of honey from packaging? In order to protect consumers' rights and strengthen honey product management, the Food and Drug Administration (Simplified Food and Drug Administration) announced that the "Packaging Honey and Its Sugar-Based Products Products" will be launched on July 1, 2023. The product name will be marked according to the honey content at a time, but is this seemingly a new product regulation for consumers. Is it really feasible to continue to check the product in the future?

{9 Where is the standard?

After the formal implementation of the "Packaging Honey and Its Sugar-Directed Products" will not only mark the origin of the raw materials in the future, but only products with a 100% honey content can be labeled "honey", "pure honey" or "100% honey"; if the honey content is more than 60%, the added sugar is labeled "sweetened honey", and if other raw materials are added, the product with a honey content is labeled "make honey" or "contains 00 honey"; products with a honey content less than 60% must be labeled "honey mouth (stylish) flavor"; if honey is not contained, the two words "honey" must not be labeled. Products that are marked incomplete will be priced at RMB 30,000 to RMB 3 million, and the mark will not be priced at RMB 40,000 to RMB 4 million, and will be recycled within a specified period of time.

From the perspective of the new product, consumers can identify products with different honey content from the label, but what is curious is where the "60%" standard comes from? In response to this, the Food and Drug Administration responded to the Food Power through a book, emphasizing that the specification is "refer to the Codex Alimentarius Commission, Japan and various countries' international regulations, and invited domestic experts and practitioners to hold multiple seminars for joint discussions and reservations", with the aim of allowing consumers to know clearly whether they bought pure honey or sugar-filled honey.

Food and Drug Administration pointed out that Japan's "Guidelines for Implementation of Honey Quality Labels (Basic Preference for Quality Indication of Basic Applications)" and "Honey Labels Fair Competition (Control Fair Competition for Fair Competition)" are also the criteria for "sweetened Honey" based on the honey content of 60%. Wu Ziliang, the director of the Miaoli District Agricultural Improvement Site, explained that setting a 60% standard not only complies with the standards commonly used in the world, but also reserves creative space for food processing industries.

2 Big Inspection Methods can only be referenced? Expert: You must also rely on other methods to verify

To find out the false or false honey, you must have a corresponding inspection method. Currently, there are two recommended inspection methods announced by the Ministry of Welfare. They are "Examination Method for C4 Plant Sugar in Honey" and "Examination Method for Steady Carbon Isotope Ratio of Saccharides in Honey". The Institute of Food Industry Development (simplified food institute) is responsible for honey. An unknown researcher who was examined explained that since bees use C3 plants as the main honey source plant, the C4 plant sugar content of pure honey should be less than 7%. Through the former, the C4 plant sugar can be checked whether the honey is made of raw materials such as corn and sugar cane cane is added; the latter is to separate the honey sugars and measure whether the ratio of carbon isotopes meets the standards after separating the honey sugar.

However, the supervisory authority also established the above two inspection methods, but said that honey may be affected by factors such as the origin, honey source, climate and environment. Therefore, the inspection can only be used as one of the methods for whether the subsequent investigation should be initiated, that is, the analysis results can only be regarded as a reference for possible misleading, and the actual results are still based on the traceability investigation for comprehensive analysis.

Professor Chen Yuwen of the Department of Biotechnology and Animal Sciences of Yilan University admitted that the current measurement results can only show that honey has unrolled sugar stew, but it cannot calculate the ratio of honey to sugar stew. That is to say, in fact, only qualitative rather than quantitative analysis can be achieved. Only knowing that there is mixed but not how much it is. The inspection standards for the announcement are based on international standards and have not been formulated according to Taiwan's current industry conditions. Wu Ziwei supplemented, "The test can be done to initially examine honey that is deliberately fructose or fructose, but it cannot distinguish the comprehensive mixing problem, so the test method of carbon isotopes has always been in dispute internationally." She admitted that there is no method that can perfectly measure the mixing ratio of honey. If an unscrupulous practitioner maliciously adds C3 plant sugar, it is even more impossible to detect it by relying on the above two methods, and further verification is needed through other methods.

In fact, the European Union had mixed tests on 320 honey imported into Europe in March 2023. In addition to using EA/LC-IRMS to test the carbon isotopes in honey, it also further evaluates the true nature of honey through HPAEC-PAD, LC-HRMS and 1H-NMR..

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The method has a qualified test room but cannot be found. Can the government really keep it in touch?

It is obvious that the two recommended test methods currently announced cannot accurately detect the distorted content of honey. Not only that, the tests related to honey were searched on the laboratory certification information network of the Food and Drug Administration. They were all the tests of animal drug retention, heavy metal and national standard CNS1305, while the tests of C4 plant sugar only There is a Taiwan Inspection Technology Co., Ltd. (SGS) that is a qualified certification laboratory. What is even more puzzling is that among the dozens of inspection items on the list, none of them is the "Stable Carbon Isotope Ratio Inspection Method for Honey's Saccharide", which also means that no laboratory that can perform this inspection has been certified by the Food and Drug Administration.

In response to this dilemma, the Food Institute researchers revealed that there are many laboratory rooms in the actual workshop that are capable of conducting relevant carbon isotope inspections. However, the application qualification and whether to apply for certification are determined independently by the laboratory. If it is a colder inspection project, the laboratory generally does not spend money to verify. In addition, researchers understand that the number of instruments that can detect 60% honey content in China is extremely small, which may also cause problems in future labeling inspections.

The labeling rules are on the way, but how to check the labeling reality?

In this way, how should the supervisor implement the regulations and how should the quality of honey be kept in place for consumers? Researchers from the Food Institute believe that the most safe way is to add actual on-site inspections from government units to ensure that the packaging label of honey products is true and not. Judging from the current situation, the two inspection suggestions announced by the Ministry of Welfare are not enough to solve the doubts about honey filling. Whether other inspection methods will be proposed in the future and whether subsequent audits can be implemented is still unknown.