Report of meeting of the honey committee, 24 March 2025
Chair: Dean Haley
Committee: Tony Blackwell, Giorgio Venturieri,
Norhasnida Zawawi, Tim Heard, Peter Abbott, Ann Ross.
Dear ANBA Members,
The honey committee provides the following report of our activities since October 2024.
Now that we have a food standard, our producers will be expected to comply with food safety requirements. I have taken some actions to support our ANBA members.
In addition to the advisory notes provided in the Cross Pollinator last year, I’ve reached out to individual producers and offered them advice and help. If I could find a person on the internet selling Native Bee Honey, I reached out to them. Only some people replied, but it generated meaningful conversations. I was able to speak with producers directly regarding their duties under Australian law, as well as the ANBA’s commitment to support our members in regulatory compliance. I believe that the honey committee could offer a service to our member/honey producers, helping them create food safe businesses and food safety plans.
I found a commercial honey packer that our members can use. This option means that individual native honey producers do not need food safe premises and licences, they can use the honey packer. None of the producers I contacted chose to use this avenue, but I shall use the packer soon.
They provided quotation, are competitively priced, and can cater for small volume hand fills, appropriate to our small batch sizes. More recently, I have compiled a list of testing laboratories that can test to Standard 2.8.3, and test general food safety indicators such as aerobic plate counts and yeast and mould counts.
I’ve asked these laboratories for quotations and I’m currently compiling these quotes for our members. I propose that ANBA could be the ‘customer’, and we can triage and submit samples for our members. This will help our members access occasional lab tests, as the labs are unlikely to want to have multiple small accounts. The cost per test will be on-charged to the member.
The Honey Committee, met via virtual meeting on 13th March
- The three members in attendance discussed:
- Recent literature on research and advances in stingless bee honey
- Australian industry innovations
- International competitors
- Supporting members by providing access to honey testing laboratories
- The possibility of accessing research grants and engaging in collaborative research, especially for shelf life and storage conditions for native bee honey
- The committee has sent a full report and minutes to the National ANBA committee.
- We would like to provide the following link to Australian Food Standard 2.8.3 – Native Bee Honey.