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

To ask His Majesty's Government which honey producers have been prosecuted in each of the past five years for misrepresenting the honey they have sold.

Local Authorities (LAs) are requested to submit details of prosecutions they have made to the Food Standards Agency. In the last five years the Government has not been made aware of any prosecutions of honey producers misrepresenting honey they have sold.

Responsibility for assessing business compliance with the majority of food legislation rests with LAs. They will consider any areas of non-compliance with food law and take appropriate enforcement action in line with a hierarchy, risk-based approach to ensure the business takes the necessary steps to achieve compliance. Each situation will be judged on its own merits by the relevant LA to determine the proportionate course of action.

The Honey (England) Regulations 2015 lay down strict rules that honey must comply with in terms of quality and compositional criteria. Regulation 19 applies, with modifications, section 10 of the Food Safety Act 1990 to enable Improvement Notices to be served on a Food Business Operator where a LA has reasonable grounds for believing that they have not complied with the requirements of the legislation. Improvement notices should provide a roadmap to compliance and would be issued as part of the escalation of enforcement in line with the LA’s hierarchy of enforcement.

Honey fraud is taken very seriously and will always be fully investigated. For example, allegations in the media that a small number of specific blended honeys sold in the UK were fraudulent have been fully investigated by the relevant LAs and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to indicate fraud or non-compliance. The Government is confident the honey regulations and enforcement of those regulations are fit for purpose.