In today’s world, honey has one of the most varied markets of any food, ranging from the hobbyist beekeeper selling at local farmers markets to giant international corporations shipping around the world. According to the National Honey Board, honey is also heavily used in packaged foods with 65% of sales being bulk sales for food service and food manufacturers.
As a manufacturer, it’s important to know how to label honey in a way that attracts and informs consumers while complying with local and federal regulations.
Unlike most foods, labeling requirements and best practices for honey vary widely depending on the market. This guide walks you through these important regulations to ensure your labels look their best when they reach consumers.
Federal requirements for honey labeling are covered by 21 U.S.C. 342 and 343. This includes sections 402 and 403 of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Surprisingly, there are only three federal requirements on all honey labels:
If the product is pure honey, its common name must be “honey.” If the product contains other sweeteners, the ingredient list and name must clearly state what is in the container. Usually, this takes the form of “a blend of” followed by sweeteners in order of percentage. For example, if the product is mostly honey with some corn syrup, it should be labeled “A Blend of Honey and Corn Syrup.”
For flavored honeys, the common name should refer to the primarily flavoring, i.e. “Strawberry-flavored Honey.”
The weight is listed at the bottom 30% of the principal display panel (PDP) on the inner and outer packaging. It must be listed in both customary and metric units.
This requirement includes the address, number and other contact information for the manufacturer, packer or distributor.
Packagers have the option of naming specific floral sources, like clover honey, in the common name. When you claim the floral source of the honey, you must have proof that the name matches the chief floral source for the product.
An ingredient statement is not required on pure honey to meet FDA labeling requirements. All other products must list the ingredients by weight in order from heaviest to lightest.
After debating whether sweeteners like honey are “added” sugar, the FDA came to a compromise for nutrition labeling on these products.
The format of the Nutrition Facts is the same as any other label, except it must include a footnote. This footnote at the bottom of the label states “One serving adds (grams) of sugar to your diet and represents (percent) of the Daily Value for Added Sugars.” The amounts vary, but for typical pure honey, this will be 17g and 34% for a standard tablespoon serving.
There are labeling exemptions for honey producers making less than $500,000 per year, as long as there aren’t health claims on the label. For more information, read this guidance document on FDA.gov.
It is generally recommended to include the statement “WARNING: Do Not Feed Honey to Infants Under One Year Old.” As honey bees gather nectar and turn it into honey, they can pick up Clostridium botulinum spores. Approximately 20% of all botulism cases are linked to honey, and 90% of cases occur in infants under 6 months old.
The country of origin is required for imported products, even if they’re packaged in the U.S. The country of origin does not need to be included on domestic honey.
Production and “best by” dates are optional on honey and honey products. Raw honey doesn’t go bad, as long as it isn’t contaminated or exposed to moisture. However, it can crystallize and change flavor over time. The USDA recommends consuming honey within a year of production for the best flavor, and notes that significant flavor is lost after 5 years of storage.
There’s more than one way to certify and label organic products, including organic honey. To learn more about certification and labeling, check out our blog entry “Your Guide to Organic Food Label Requirements.”
While not required, listing the honey grade on your product label helps inform consumers about your product. This grading is based on flavor, aroma and clarity. USDA grades are determined by points scored using tables IV and V in the U.S. Grade Standards for Extracted Honey:
U.S. Grade A – 90 points
U.S. Grade B – 80 points
U.S. Grade C – 70 points
Substandard – Below 70 points
Color is measured using a Pfund scale. This measures optical density: the higher the number, the darker the honey. While there are many terms in use to describe honey color, these are the official names and Pfund unit ranges recognized by the USDA:
– Water White – 0 – 8 mm
– Extra Light – 8 – 16 mm
– Light – 16 – 34 mm
– Extra Light Amber – 35 – 50 mm
– Light Amber – 51 – 84 mm
– Amber – 85 – 114 mm
– Dark – 115 – 140 mm
The Department of Agriculture does not use color to determine the grade, since it varies depending on the floral source. For example, high-quality citrus honey is usually Extra Light, while heather honey is usually Amber.
Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Vermont are the only states that have strict rules on which food products can be called “locally grown.” Sometimes products must be produced and packaged within the state, while others allow out-of-state products, as long as they’re produced within a certain distance of the retailer.
In other states, meeting requirements for local production allows producers to take advantage of local advertising campaigns or become a preferred supplier for school lunch programs. The National Honey Board released a white paper on the subject, covering regulations across the country.
Whether you’re a beekeeper, running a co-op, or packaging honey from a variety of suppliers, choosing the right label has a big impact on your product. This extends from bottling all the way to the disposal of empty containers.
Food labeling must remain intact during the life of the product to inform consumers about food safety, and it also plays an important role in attracting customers when they’re browsing store shelves.
Link to Jiwei
Bottling in plastic containers adds two challenges: flexing and outgassing.
BOPP and vinyl face stock are the top choices for these containers, because they won’t wrinkle when bent or stretched. This makes them ideal for squeezable containers. Outgassing is when gases pass through plastic, either from the inside of the container or the plastic itself. This can form bubbles underneath the surface of the label. Using fine adhesive carriers allows gases to escape before they collect under the label.
Bottling in glass containers requires less thought about label material and more thought about placement. Pressure sensitive labels wrinkle or flag if placed on areas with complex curves, like the top and bottom edges of a jar. These containers frequently have surface inconsistencies that can shift the placement of labels on each container. Adding 1/8 to 1/4 inch of overrun space keeps the label on the body of the jar.
The easiest way to add production or “best by” dates is by using a print-and-apply labeler. It has a print engine that adds black and white text to the label just before it’s applied. The date can be set directly on the machine or it can be transmitted to the labeler’s PLC over your operating technology system.
Since bulk sales make up the majority of the honey market, it pays to have a system in place for large containers. Our pail labeling system has no problem handling the 5 gallon pails commonly used to supply industrial and food service customers.
I’ve heard countless stories over the years that claim grocery store honey is fake, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. When we’re talking about pancake syrup, yeah, I get it. But honey?
What I mean is this: Most folks know that real maple syrup is the thick, mineral-rich deliciousness that’s tapped from maple trees, right? But if you check the ingredients for Mrs. Butterworth, Log Cabin, or other popular supermarket brands, you won’t see any real tree syrup at all. What you will see is high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavoring, and other grossness.
I thought maybe that was the deal with honey as well. But I’ve flipped over the bottles of supermarket brands to check their ingredients and all I’ve ever seen was “honey”. So what’s the dealio?
I finally took the time to dig in and here’s what I found out.
Also read: What’s killing our bees and how can our choices help?
The first major issue is that brands sometimes blend cheap sugar or other sweeteners into their honey in order to lower their costs and improve their profits. Then they label their product as “pure honey” without disclosing the added ingredient(s). This practice misleads consumers into buying something they may not have otherwise chosen to buy. This purposeful mislabeling is a form of “food fraud” and it’s a big problem.
A closely related problem is that many of these brands were found to have filtered out most or all of the bee pollen. Reported health benefits aside, bee pollen helps researchers to identify the botanical and geographic origin of honey. If the honey is lacking in bee pollen, the researchers can’t tell where it came from. And that’s the point.
Honey from around the world — but mostly from Asia — has been found to contain antibiotics, heavy metals (often lead), and other contaminants that we wouldn’t expect or want to find in our honey. This contaminated honey can (and does) make its way onto our store shelves. There are a few ways this can happen, but here are two oversimplified examples.
Let’s say a honey packing company in the U.S. imports their honey from Europe. To save costs, their supplier blends their higher quality honey with lower quality honey from, say, China or Indonesia. The importer believes their honey to be from one place when it is actually a blend of at least two or more origins. In this case, the packing company inadvertently mislabels its honey as pure or single-source.
Another common scenario is not so innocent. Honey brokers in the US are knowingly importing honey from China and India and then selling it to big brands. Despite countless arrests and convictions of honey smugglers around the world, the practice continues. As soon as authorities figure out how a trafficking operation works, the clever smugglers change things up and evade the investigators.
This brings up a third related issue. We now know that exporters filter out the bee pollen in order to hide the honey’s country of origin. But the process by which the pollen is removed may (or may not) be problematic.
Many believe that the only way to remove so much bee pollen is through an aggressive process called “ultrafiltration”. The high heat and pressure from ultrafiltration change the honey at the molecular level, such that the original honey is barely recognized in the final product. With ultrafiltration, we end up with a sweetener that is derived from honey, but which is no longer honey.
This is where the “fake honey” stories come from. But there are many ways to remove pollen from honey and apparently, it’s not likely to be ultrafiltration.
Vaughn Bryant, a Texas A&M professor and expert pollen investigator, is the researcher whose study commissioned by Food Safety News (FSN) spurred most of the fake honey stories we see today. A more recent study by Australian scientists continued the conversation when it found that as much as 20% of (non-local) honey found in Australian markets had been adulterated.
Neither Bryant nor the Aussie scientists called the honey “fake”. The FSN writer (indirectly) did in and journalists ran with it, using “fake honey” in their clickbait titles. Years later, the journalists who covered the Australian study did the same.
Bryant followed up in by saying that while the filtering of pollen is problematic in that we can’t otherwise determine its nectar or geographic origin, the honey is likely highly filtered, but not ultrafiltered. Bryant also agreed with the National Honey Board that “honey is made by honeybees from the nectar of flowers and plants, not pollen.” And “honey is still honey, even without pollen.”
So while it is true that ultra-filtered “honey” is no longer honey, highly filtered honey is still honey… with or without its pollen.
When honey is gathered from the hive, the harvest inevitably includes large bits of beeswax. No matter how careful the harvest, small bits of bee wings and legs can also make their way into the honey. (Bothersome, I know.)
Large commercial brands will highly filter the honey to remove all these large and small particles. The result is an exceptionally clear look that makes the honey more attractive on store shelves. Filtration also smooths out the texture, making it easier to squeeze from those bear-shaped (and other less silly-looking) plastic bottles. This filtration also helps the honey to not crystallize so easily.
Unfortunately, this heavy filtering can also remove even smaller particles of pollen, as well as its propolis. While raw foodists, “beegans”, and other healthy eaters (myself included) might sarcastically call this practice “criminal”, this case of pollen removal isn’t fraudulent.
Oh, and by the way, this crystal layer of glucose that forms at the top of the honey jar is mostly a problem for U.S. consumers. In other countries, crystallization is recognized as something that happens naturally. They just warm the jar a little and stir the crystalized glucose back into the honey. No biggie. (Personally, I love to scrape it off the top and eat it. Nom nom!!)
With all this fake honey hoo-ha abound, how can you find truly pure honey? As we’ve learned, the adulteration of honey happens — sometimes deliberately and sometimes inadvertently. Either way, the words “pure honey” on the front side of the label are not enough to go by. And since additives aren’t always disclosed, checking the ingredients on the back of the label is also not a guarantee of what’s inside.
While the labels can be tricky, there are a few claims that tend to hold up.
Conventional honey is often filtered through a natural, sedimentary rock called diatomaceous earth. While diatomaceous earth is absolutely loved by healthy and eco-lifestylists as a natural alternative for everything from flea control to detoxification, it’s actually a no-no when it comes to the organic certification of honey. High-pressure filtering and any fine mesh filters are also prohibited for organic honey.
These restrictions on fine-filtering mean the bee pollen stays put in organic honey. As a result, consumers reap the added health benefits from the pollen and the honey remains traceable.
The term “local” doesn’t come with any enforceable requirements, as an organic certification would. However, Vaughn Bryant (the pollen investigator mentioned earlier) says that in all his many years of analyzing honey, he has found that “locally-produced honey is usually full of pollen and is most often authentic in terms of what it claims to be.”
Raw honey is closest to how the honey would exist naturally in the beehive. It is harvested by extraction, settling, or straining. Some raw honey is minimally heated, just enough to get the honey into the jar and never above 118-degrees, which is the temperature that kills the healthy enzymes we want. It may also be minimally filtered to remove the larger bits of honeycomb or wax, but the pollen and propolis remain intact.
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