FSSAI notifies standards for honey and its products to curb adulteration

Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI) has notified food safety standards for honey and its products in bid to curb adulteration. These standards will be applicable to both domestic manufacturers and importers. It will help farmers to fetch better prices for their products.

Key Features of new standards

It defines honey as natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from nectar of blossoms or from secretions of plants, which honey bees collect, transform and store in honeycombs for ripening. Honey products should comply with 18 parameters like that of sucrose content, glucose ratio, pollen count, foreign oligosaccharides etc,
These products should contain fixed maximum 5% limit for sucrose, 10% for carviacallosa and honeydew honey. The moisture percentage should be maximum 20% and pollen count should be 25,000 per gram. If product is sold as honey then food ingredient, including food additives should not be added to it.
Honey should not be heated or processed to such extent that its essential composition is changed and its quality is impaired. Honey can be labelled according to floral or plant source, if it comes from any particular source and has organoleptic, physicochemical and microscopic properties corresponding with torigin.
In case of ‘Monofloral Honey’, minimum pollen content of plant species concerned should not be less than 45% of total pollen content. In case of ‘Multi Floral Honey’, pollen content of any of plant species should not exceed 45% of total pollen content.

Background

About 90,000 tonnes of honey of all varieties is produced annually in the country. There are about 30 lakh honey bee colonies and five lakh people are engaged in the business. Government considers promoting farmers to venture into beekeeping business as key component to increase their income. Union Government is promoting honey production through mission for integrated development of horticulture (MIDH). It has established National Bee Board for implementing various activities for development of scientific beekeeping under MIDH.

Month: Current Affairs - August, 2018