New Zealand imposter honey under fire

The labeling standards of companies based in one country can be affected by those in another to which they are closely tied. For example, a large amount of specimens of a specific type of honey from New Zealand are allegedly being called out for claiming to have healing properties they don’t actually have. Making labels that aren’t accurate can thus disrupt trade relations and majorly impact a company’s reputation and bottom line.

The Australian reports on how bottles of a substance have been sold as Manuka honey produced in New Zealand may have been false versions lacking the supposedly skin-healing benefits that the genuine article has. As a result, the U.K. and New Zealand subsequently launched investigations into the honey’s production, finding that the amount of products marketed as “Manuka” vastly exceeds the amount of honey actually made.

This doesn’t just appear to be a case of using a product’s name as a genre or for something else, with the honey specifically designed to benefit off of the popularity of the real thing. On Radio New Zealand, the country’s Minister of Food Safety said that new rules are needed to combat this misrepresentation.

“In order to get a correct label, you have to land on what that label’s going to say, and part of the difficulty is that there aren’t any scientific markers at the moment,” they said. “The whole debate is around what that label says.”

Whether your main product is a food or vitamin supplement, your company can research how to make labels that make it clear what is original and what isn’t.