LEGAL DEFINITION OF "PURE HONEY"???

by derek
(Florida)

Is there such a legal requirement? In SA? USA? EU?

Health Regulations may demand something?

Hello Derek,
As I read it, if you claim your product is 'pure honey' then it should have absolutely no additives, and so certainly no adulteration with other sugars.

I personally market 'raw, lightly-filtered honey'. As such it's not 'pure' containing deliberately small amounts of pollen.

Mind you, even after filtering honey through the finest muslin I'm pretty certain some pollen would get through, thus it's not technically 'pure.'

However, that's splitting hairs; the intention surely of a legal definition is to exclude all deliberate adulteration with some non-bee product.

I would be very surprised if the USA and EU do not have stringent legal guidelines behind the marketing of 'pure honey'; to what it's enforced is another matter.

In South Africa there is much adulteration of honey from imported honeys; buyer beware; if it's too cheap to be true, it's too cheap to be pure honey.

It is time consuming and expensive I believe to test honey for adulteration.

Does that make sense?

B