Fighting Fraud and Adulteration and Preserving Authenticity in Organic Honey

Honey fraud is rife around the globe and comprises a significant threat to worldwide food supplies, as beekeepers fulfil the important role of supporting pollinators which are vital in the maintenance of global food chains. By evolving complicated honey processing (“honey laundering”) procedures through dehydration, ultra-filtration and flavouring, disguising syrup with high precision dispensers that are very difficult to be detected, purification with resin technology, the original nature of honey is adulterated. Large industrial honey brokers and packers being involved in this fraud are undermining both consumers and honest beekeepers that have become key actors in preserving the environment and biodiversity.

Honey has been identified statistically80 as one of the most adulterated ingredients, from an extensive record of scholarly journals and media reports. It has a long history of dilution, substitution, misrepresentation of floral sources, and geographical origin. Highly processed “honey” has become a serious issue in response to the rising demand for honey and the global decline of bee populations. According to research by Food Safety News, as much as 76% of the honey sold in grocery stores is fake.

ALLIANCE will leverage the capabilities of BeeMark81 that not only allows tracking of digital data but also enables a holistic supply chain traceability, practises and processes that ensure sustainable harvesting and effective labelling to remove fraud. The BeeMark certification standard is based on practices and processes that ensure bee health, sustainable honey harvesting, product integrity and accurate labelling. It is based on decentralised blockchain technologies to validate sustainable & ethical production of honey at source, trace honey from origin to point of sale and share the product stories across a range of immutable real time digital channels. BeeMark uses AI-enabled sensors to continuously monitor bee health and the wellbeing of production colonies. The development of the BeeMark solution will significantly improve the means to ensure the integrity of Honey supply chains and protect the interests of the consumers. Consequently, the use of Blockchain not only eliminates data manipulation or errors, but also improves time to results and logistics, by delivering increased trust, transparency, and accountability between disparate entities in the complex Honey supply chains. The fully integrated solution will display the following advantages: (1) process automation; (2) real-time tracking and monitoring of production processes; (3) immutable audit trails, full transaction history; (4) proof of certification, identity, provenance and compliance; (5) improved honey product safety; Concluding, the overall system it is environmentally friendly, producing trusted and immutable results, enhancing transparency and confidence throughout the honey supply chain.