Market Assessment of a Honey Quality Test

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Honey is the primary source of income for most Canadian beekeepers. For the past few years, Canadian beekeepers have produced in excess of 41 million kilograms of honey annually. Weather, the number of colonies in production and other factors have a big impact on the amount of honey produced but the value of that honey fluctuates across a much wider range. In 2014 and 2015, the farmgate value of all honey produced was approximately $210M but, in 2016, the same amount of honey brought in only $157M, largely because the bulk price of honey dropped precipitously. In a world-wide market, there are many factors that can affect commodity prices but one major concern is the volume of cheap synthetic or adulterated honey disguised as an authentic product, which can drive down honey prices. Quality assurance testing for honey would help build public trust in the product and allow producers to distinguish Canadian honey as a premium product in local and international sales and provide the CFIA with an evidence-based tool for blocking imports of false or adulterated honey. This will, in turn, benefit Canadian honey producers and packers by pushing up prices of authentic Canadian honey. A quality assurance test for honey based on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been developed by Bruker BioSpin but Canadian beekeepers have been reluctant to use it, preferring a home-grown solution. Our industry partner, Worker Bee Honey Company has recently installed a 400 MHz NMR and is seeking to apply it. In parallel, we have also been developing mass spectrometry (MS) to complement NMR data and, possibly, to provide a less expensive means of testing. Here we will develop the two spectroscopy approaches, aiming to determine the optimum solution for screening honey, both in terms of cost and ability to detect adulteration. This application is for the Market Assessment phase of the I2I program, to determine what the market for a honey quality test might be.**