Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to help tackle the mis-labelling of honey products.

The Government takes any type of food fraud very seriously, including honey mislabelling. It recognises the importance of protecting food standards and has set minimum quality standards for many foods, including honey. All honey on sale must comply with the Honey (England) Regulations 2015 which set out detailed specifications of its composition, labelling, and quality criteria.

Defra works closely with enforcement authorities and with the National Food Crime Unit to ensure honey sold in the UK is not subject to adulteration or mislabelling, meets our high standards and maintains a level playing field between honey producers.

Defra has an active programme of research dedicated to honey authenticity testing best practice to ensure fitness for purpose and use of standardised approaches to support enforcement of honey labelling rules.