Ensuring Liquid Gold is the Real Deal

A unique method for fraud detection in honey

Research has shown honey to be the world’s third most adulterated food. In particular, Manuka honey, from New Zealand, has been praised for its health benefits, demanding a premium price tag as a result. But over the past number of years, there has been an increase in adulterated Manuka honey being placed on shop shelves, resulting in New Zealand bringing its first ‘fake Manuka honey’ prosecution to trial in 2019. Around that time, a Eurofins company became the first laboratory in the world to offer a new most sensitive honey authenticity testing method.

Honey is widely regarded as one of the most adulterated foods in the world and testing to determine its authenticity is therefore extremely important. Manuka honey, hailed by many as liquid gold, has been praised for its antibacterial and healing properties for hundreds of years. It originates from the Manuka tree, which is native to New Zealand, therefore honey made elsewhere cannot be labelled Manuka. The honey has become so popular in fact, that a “Manuka gold rush” resulted in many counterfeit products being brought to market.

The composition and characteristics of honeys are subject to broad variation due to the numerous honey varieties and origins worldwide. This makes the detection of possible fraudulent sugar syrup addition particularly difficult. Therefore, many complementary analytical methods had to be employed in order to perform a reliable and decisive assessment. In addition, fraudsters continue to push limits, and refined syrups, which often perfectly mimic honey composition, are also added by producers. Therefore, particularly sensitive and reliable complementary testing methods are required to protect brands and customers. Eurofins has established the most advanced and reliable testing method for honey authenticity.

In 2018, Eurofins Food Integrity Control Services GmbH was the first laboratory worldwide to offer authenticity analysis of honey by liquid chromatography coupled with high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) as an ISO 17025 accredited method. The method enables the detection of known as well as unknown honey adulterants (targeted and untargeted analysis) as part of just one analytical test and has a significantly higher sensitivity for foreign sugar adulterants compared to previously established honey authenticity testing methods. The method combines a number of single detection methods that test for specific additives or adulterations into one multi-method which can simultaneously detect different types of sugar syrups used for adulteration, making testing more efficient and cost-effective.

The Eurofins LC-HRMS method builds on the Group’s established reputation as a leader in authenticity testing for honey. In 2014, the Eurofins Laboratory in Nantes had already pioneered a new analytical approach to test honey integrity. Developed as part of a collaborative research project, this holistic method, which uses high resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), provides a wide range of information that is both targeted (quantification of defined substances) and non-targeted (identifying deviations from reference spectra). It can simultaneously detect the addition of sugars from any source, or other irregularities in the honey, such as excessive heat treatment or fermentation, and also confirm the botanical and geographical origin, independently from conventional pollen microscope analysis. An example of such advanced origin control is the control of Manuka honey authenticity by NMR.

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