TALLAHASSEE – Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles H. Bronson has announced that his department has instituted the first regulation in the nation – and perhaps the world – prohibiting any additives, chemicals or adulterants in honey produced, processed or sold in Florida.
The regulation, which took effect July 14, provides the first ever “Standard of Identity” for honey.
“We want to assure consumers that the product that they are buying is pure,” Bronson said. “Too often in the past, honey has been cut with water or sugar, and sometimes even contaminated with insecticides or antibiotics. In the future, when you’re paying for honey in this state, pure honey is what you will get.”
State Rep. Alan Hays, of Umatilla, has been a major advocate of the new regulation, which is supported by Florida’s honey industry, and joined Bronson at a press conference here today to unveil the new rule.
“I am pleased that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is leading the way for all America in establishing this standard by which all honey may now be measured,” Hays said. “Commissioner Bronson and the leaders of the honey industry – beekeepers and honey processors – are to be applauded for their leadership in protecting not only the health of Floridians but also in protecting this industry which is so vital to the production of food products for all mankind.”
Under terms of the new regulation, honey containing anything other than the “natural food product resulting from the harvest of nectar by honeybees” is considered an adulterated or mislabeled product. Such products are subject to a “stop sale” order – one in which a manufacturer, processor or merchant would be served with an order prohibiting the product’s sale. Repeat offenders would face fines of up to $500 per violation.
Florida is the fourth leading honey producing state in the country with cash receipts to beekeepers of more than $15 million in 2008 and an industry that has an economic impact estimated at $40 million a year. It employs more than 500 Floridians.
As a result of a flood of adulterated honey from overseas into Florida in 2006, a petition was submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later that year by five major honey producers and processors, asking the federal agency to establish a U.S. standard of identity for honey. Two years later, the FDA responded that due to other pressing matters, it would be unable to review the petition.
At that point, the industry asked Bronson’s department if it would consider developing a standard of identity for the product, and today’s announcement is the culmination of that effort.
Bronson noted that despite efforts in various quarters, international governing bodies have to date been unable to establish an international definition of or standard of identity for honey, making it likely that Florida’s regulation governing honey may be the first of its kind anywhere.