UK Honey Regulations Simplified – What Must Go On Your Honey Label

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today we're going to talk about the honey regulations, and we're going to focus on how to get your honey from a bulk container like this into a fully compliant labelled product that's ready to sell in the shops. So we're going to talk about all of the specific honey regulations that are applicable to selling honey in England and Wales only. There's different regulations in place if you're in Scotland or Northern Ireland. This video is going to simplify the honey regulations for you though, if you're selling your honey in England and Wales. We're going to talk through all of the different items within the honey regulations. We'll spell them out, we'll give you examples and make it really easy for you to follow the advice. We're going to hold off one really important point to the end of the video though, so stay tuned right to the end and you'll see what that point is. So the first thing to say is the honey regulations for England and Wales, the actual legal document is very, very detailed and very confusing. So I fully appreciate if you open up that document and try and read it from start to finish, it's confusing and it's difficult to read and potentially difficult to understand. So the reason that I'm doing this video is to try and simplify some of the points and give you an easy crib sheet just to go through to make sure that your labels are fully compliant with the Honey Regulations. So only the courts in England and Wales can do a true interpretation of what's in those regulations. You really need to get that checked out by someone else. This video should just be seen as a crib sheet, it's not an interpretation of the law. So the Honey Regulations, we're going to break this down into a few separate sections and give you some examples on how to get that information onto your label. So the honey regulations state that you need the following details on your label: the name of the honey, the name and the address of the producer, the country of origin, basic storage conditions, a best before date, a lot mark, and weight marking. So in this video, we're going to go through each and every one of those points there. Going to give you a little bit more detail to make sure that you get it right first time when you're putting your labels forward to print. So the name of your honey. So what you need to put on your jars is honey. You can't call it anything else. You can't call it a nectar-based product. None of that. It needs to be called honey. So that can be Welsh honey, English honey. Dave's honey, John's honey, Hertfordshire honey— all of these are acceptable terms. And all you're doing there is you're putting a precursor to the name. So anything goes in that sense. You can use the country, you can use your county, you can use your name. What you can't use is anything misleading. So you couldn't call it, for example, wasp honey, because honey is made by bees, and if you call it wasp honey, Then you're inferring that it's made by wasps. So first things first, we need to talk about what is in the jar, and that really comes down to what is honey. Honey is a natural sweet substance produced by the nectar of plants or secretion of insects, which is stored in honeycombs to ripen and mature. So if what you've got in your jar is that, you can call that honey. You can't call it anything else, and you can't call anything else honey. So it needs to be that. So the first thing on your jar is you need the words honey. Now you can just call it honey, you don't need anything else in front of that. Your jar, it can just be called honey, that's perfectly acceptable, but what the honey regulations do allow are a number of reserved descriptions. So it allows you to use any of these reserved descriptions to differentiate your honey from a different type of honey. So I'll just run through some of those differentiation terms now. So you can call it blossom honey or nectar honey, if indeed it is blossom honey or nectar honey. You can call it honeydew honey, if indeed it is a secretion from an insect, like an aphid. You can call it comb honey if you're cutting it directly from combs, like a cutcomb product. You can call it chunk honey if you've got pieces of that comb in a jar and then it's filled with honey. You can call it extracted honey if you've extracted it via a centrifuge. You can call it pressed honey, which is obviously honey that's been pressed through either a heather press or some sort of mechanical press. You can call it filtered honey. Now, that doesn't mean if you filter your honey it needs to be called filtered honey. It all comes down to the, the rating of the microns that you use. So if you're using high-pressure filtration system to take out the majority of the pollen, to give a longer shelf life, which is what a lot of the commercial producers do where they get the honey in, in bulk and put it into supermarkets, then you do need to call it filtered honey. If you're just putting it through, say, a 400/200 micron sieve, then you can just still call it honey. And then the final one is baker's honey. So if the honey reaches a certain temperature, we'll cover this in a separate video, you can't sell it as honey anymore and it needs to be called baker's honey. So all of those reserved descriptions, they are the legal definitions of reserved descriptions that you can use. So if your honey falls into any of those categories, you can use those descriptions. You can't use descriptions if your honey doesn't fall into that category, and you're not required by law to use those descriptions. The only exception to that is baker's honey. You cannot sell baker's honey as normal honey. It needs to have that mark on it baker's honey. The next thing on the list then is the country of origin, and this is really important and is a bit of an eye-opener if you go into the supermarket and have a look at what's printed on some of the honey labels. You are required by law to state where the honey was harvested, not where the honey was packed, where it was harvested. So if you were to take Welsh honey over the border and pack it in England, you still need to put on that label produce of Wales. And vice versa, if you were taking a product from England and bringing it into Wales, the packaging will need to state produce of England. Now you can cover yourself if you want to put produce of United Kingdom, and then you can interchangeably sell the honey that's produced in Wales and England. That works and that is acceptable. If you're buying honey from abroad, so either an EU country or a blend of EU honeys or something that's outside of the EU, you also need to put that descriptor in there. So be it blend of EU honeys or honey from non-EU sources. So really important, you need to make sure that you put the correct country of origin of where that honey was harvested. So the next one is a durability indication, and the way that you do that with honey is you put a best before date on it. Now the best before date, you can come up with that yourself. Honey is a very durable, long-lasting product. It doesn't go off very easily. At least 1 year from extraction as an absolute bare minimum in terms of the best before date. The honey should be good after that though. We actually use a 3-year expiry date of Black Mountain honey, and we put that best before date on the base of the label. So you need to make sure that your honey has a best before date on it. You then need to make sure that you put your storage conditions on there, and the storage conditions can be something as simple as Please store in a cool, dark cupboard to ensure quality. Something really simple. You just need to give some guidance as to how that best before date is going to be achieved. Because if you take that best before date and say, right, that's good for a year, and then you go and place it next to a really hot oven for 12 hours a day, or you place it next to a log burner, it's clearly going to deteriorate much quicker than if you keep it in a cool, dark cupboard. So the 2 go hand in hand. You need to put the durability indication, which is your best before date, and then some guidance as to how you're going to maintain the conditions to get the honey to reach that best before date. Now, the next one is lot marking. So each individual batch that you extract and jar should have an individual bespoke lot mark. So now a lot of honey jars do this as a separate lot mark. So I see this, you have a best before date which might say January 2020, and then a lot mark which might be F1234. That's absolutely fine and acceptable and works, but it means that you need 2 things at once. The way we do it at Black Mountain Honey, and the way that's legal within the honey regulations, is our labels say best before date slash lot number, see base. So on our honey label, we're pointing to you to where that information is kept, And then on the base of our jars, we put a six-digit best before date. And that's really important because if you just put on your jars best before slash lot number C base, and then on your best before date on the base of the jar, you put best before end of January 2020. That is not acceptable within the regulations. It needs to be an absolute minimum of a six-digit best before date. So this one here, for example. I've got a best before date of A, which indicates where, for me, the honey has come from. So which apiary, can be A, B, C, D, E, F, G. And then I've got 19 September '23. So that's a completely unique, specific day where this honey goes off. So A, 19 September '23. And then on the label it says best before date slash lot number, see base. And that best before date in its 6-digit format acts as my lot number. So you can go down 2 separate routes here. You can either go down putting a, a very vague best before date, maybe best before end Jan 2023, and a separate lot number, and you can print that anywhere within your label. Or you can go down the route of saying that your best before date in a 6-digit format is also your lot number. That's perfectly acceptable within the honey regulations, and in my mind, quite a lot easier to manage. The next thing is weight marking. So honey was traditionally sold in pound jars. There definitely seems to be a leaning towards imperial weights on honey marking. What the honey regulations say though is that you must give a metric equivalent. So it's fine to say these are 1-pound jars of honey, or these are 12-ounce jars of honey, You must give a metric equivalent as well. So whether that's 454 grams, 340 grams, 227 grams, all of those are acceptable. Also, you're not restricted to the size of jar, so 8 ounce, 12 ounce, 1 pound, and their metric equivalents. So 227 grams, 340 grams, or 454 grams. It now says you can use whatever container you like as long as you put the minimum of the metric weight on it. So what you can't do though is say this honey weighs 1 pound and then have tiny little writing over to the left-hand side to say, oh, that also means 454 grams. It explicitly says that the metric indication must be more prominent than the imperial one. So if you've got 454 grams and 1 pound, the 454 grams just need to be ever so slightly bigger. The weight marking and the name of the food need to be shown in the same line of view when you're looking at your label. So you can't have honey on the front of your label and then at the back in a different field of vision, the weight. It needs to be in the same field of view. That's really important. It also says that there's a minimum font size of 1.2 millimeters for mandatory information. All of the information that I'm giving you in this video is mandatory information, so it should never be smaller than 1.2 millimetres. Now, 1.2 millimetres is absolutely tiny, so I don't even think I could read 1.2 millimetres. Ours are considerably bigger than that. Now, it specifically makes detail to the size of the weights on the, on the packaging as well. So the size of the weights in terms of the font need to be at least 4 millimetres high. So I would just always err on the side of caution here. When people are looking for things, they want to know it's honey, they want to know a little bit about the storage, and they want to know how much it weighs. So just make sure that the weight markings are in imperial if you like, but definitely in metric. Make sure that the metric is bigger than the imperial, and make sure it's clearly visible in the same field of view as the honey, and make sure that it's at least 4 millimeters high as an absolute minimum. But I'd suggest maybe going a little bit bigger than that. Now, there's a little bit of voluntary advice that it mentions within the honey regulations. It's not explicit in that it doesn't say you have to put it on, but it is good practice, and most people are signed up to putting this snippet of information on. And it is effectively a risk warning to say that honey is not suitable for anyone under 12 months old due to a risk of botulism. So I would advise anybody to put that onto your labeling. It's not going to hinder any of your sales. It's good practice to put it on and it potentially could save a life. So you really want to err on the side of caution, make sure you put that voluntary advice on your label. So I'll just show you a few pictures of mine and talk you through a little bit through about the information. Our designs have changed so much over the last 2 or 3 years, constantly evolving that label just to give it that different edge. But all of the key information is still on here. So I'll just run you through and show you exactly what we've got on our labels. So the first thing, Black Mountain Honey. Now, I can call it Black Mountain Honey because we live and the bees are in a very small hamlet called Black Mountain. That's perfectly acceptable. I'm not calling it Snowdon Honey where it's clearly not from Snowdon. Black Mountain is the name of where the honey is from. Now, that's not to be confused with the Black Mountains in Mid Wales. Black Mountain is a very small, tiny little village in North Wales, about a mile from where we live. So I've ticked off the first regulation there in which I need to call it honey. I've not used a reserved description, so I've not called it filtered honey, I've not called it cutcomb honey, I've not called it anything like that, just gone with a straightforward honey. And then I've gone with the name of that as well, which is Black Mountain Honey. So that's perfectly acceptable. Other acceptable uses would be Welsh honey, Flintshire honey. Any of those would be fine for me. If you come from somewhere else, you could call it Derbyshire honey. You could call it Dave's honey. You could call it John's honey. All of these are acceptable because they're referencing either the person who made it or the country or place of origin. So the next thing that we've got on our jars down at the bottom, we've got 227 grams. So we only sell 227-gram jars, just makes our lives so much easier. I see people with all these different sizes of jars, and I think it just must be a nightmare to keep hold of the stock. It's a hobby business for us, so we try and keep it simple. 4 different products, 1 size of jar means our operation is much quicker and slicker. But we also have underneath the 227 grams a considerably smaller but still legally compliant 8 ounces. So we've got the metric 227 grams and that 8 ounces imperial that's smaller, and both of the minimum text sizes are adhered to. Then at the back of our honey, we have produce of Wales, and that's because all of our honey is produced in Wales. The only exception to that is our borage honey. So we buy in our borage honey because it's very difficult to produce borage honey in Wales. So we buy it from a guy called Chris Manton down in Essex, So therefore, on the back of these labels, we put produce of the UK, and that means that the honey is produced and harvested within the United Kingdom. So we're compliant with the country of origin rule. Next one is we have best before date slash lot number, see base. So that directs you down to the bottom of the jar, and then we have our best before date, and we have A23, November '23 for this specific jar. Be careful, just make sure if you're directing people to a best before date slash lot number and you're using the same piece of information to fulfill 2 obligations within the honey regulations, make sure it's the 6-digit best before date. So that's our durability indication, and then we have our storage conditions. So our storage conditions state, store in a cool, dry place. All pure honey will granulate over time. This is a sign of its quality. It can be restored to the liquid state by submerging it in warm water for 30 to 60 minutes. So what you're saying there is you're giving them the indication as to how they can keep that product in pristine condition. You're also saying that it potentially will granulate, and if it does granulate, that doesn't impact on the quality. But if they want to get it back to that runny condition, You're giving them the advice on how they can do that as well. So that's pretty standard. You see that on a lot of jars of honey. So you just tell them where to keep it. You tell them that it might go cloudy. So if you look at olive oil, this says, it says if stored in cold weather, it might go cloudy. Then you tell them how to get it back to the state in which they bought it. So for olive oil, for example, you put it into a warm room. For honey, you might need to submerge it in warm water or leave it on a radiator to melt that honey back down to get it runny again. Then we've got our voluntary warning which says not suitable for infants under 12 months. Now you can add on that, say due to risk of botulism, but you don't need to. All you need to say is not suitable for infants under 12 months. It's nice and clear, it's on the label, there's no confusion there. So the next one is putting the address on there. So we've got our address on the label, we've also got all of our social media links, and then we've also got our website as well. So the idea of putting your name on there, they say in the regulations, as long as you are easily contactable, so you can put an email address, you could put a phone number, you can put a website, any of these things in order to identify and speak to the person who actually produced this honey, that is acceptable. So it doesn't need to be a name that goes on there, it's just some way of being able to contact the producer. Then the rest of our honey, it's just fluffy stuff. There's nothing really important in terms of what's on the regulations. We talk about our clean extraction processes. We talk about our happy bees. These are more marketing terms, and this is to sell the honey. So you need to make sure you're really clear on what's a legal requirement of the regulations on your labels and what's the marketing terms. So in terms of the regulations, that is it. It's as simple as that. I've covered the main points there. Each of those points goes into a lot more detail. So if you're concerned that I've not covered any of the points sufficiently, you can go online. There's loads of guidance on this. You can go and look at the honey regulations yourself and see all of the additional wording that goes alongside it. But they are the main points that you need to consider when you're designing your label if you want to sell it in shops. Now, I mentioned at the beginning of this video that I was going to hold back one key piece of information to the end, and here is that piece of information. Be really careful about calling your honey raw honey. Be really careful about calling your honey organic honey. Both of those terms are not reserved descriptions, and legally they cannot be used to describe that honey. And when I say it can't be used, you'll see loads of jars that do say raw honey. Our jars used to say raw honey on it, and personally, I really like the term raw because it gives people a a bit of a flavour as to what you're about, and it gives you a bit of a competitive advantage over bulk supermarket honey. Now, I know some people don't like it because they think that all of the honey produced within the UK is raw honey, and it probably is. The reason that you can't legally put it on there is because it's not a reserved description, so it's not filtered honey or baker's honey or cutcomb honey. Personally, I think the honey regulations need to put raw down as a descriptor and put down a legal basis for what raw honey is, and then use that marketing to improve the sales of UK honey. So whether or not that's enforced by Trading Standards is a completely different debate. I don't think it is very heavily enforced, and I see loads of labels with raw honey on. The only reason we took it off our labels was we were doing a huge batch down at the printers. We were doing 20,000 labels, And I just, I could just see what was going to happen. We'd get them all printed with raw, and then someone would come along, challenge it, and Trading Standards would make us take all of those labels away and use a completely different label. And then I'd be stuck with the cost of all of those labels, which I wasn't happy about. So the honey regulations doesn't implicitly state that you can use raw. It doesn't implicitly state that you can't use raw, but use it at your own risk and just do a small batch of labels if you are going to use it, because if someone comes in and challenges it, potentially going to be told by Trading Standards you need to take that label away. So that's it for the video. I've been wanting to do this one for absolutely ages because it's a really important point to get across to make sure all of that critical information is directly on your labels if you're going to sell it in shops. So I hope you found this video enjoyable. I hope you found it really useful. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.