Sticky situation for honey industry

BY ROB STOCK

The intense flavour of dark manuka honey was once so disliked it was added to cattle feed or flushed away.

Today it earns such a premium on the export market that fake manuka honey has become a serious problem industry sources say twice as much manuka honey is sold than is produced in New Zealand every year.

Instead of dealing with the problem, the $100 million industry is gripped by bitter in-fighting and legal feuding a situation so serious that National MP Paul Hutchison has called on industry leaders to set their differences aside before the business is tarnished beyond repair.

"The industry leaders must think of the collective good," he said. "The present situation is not good for anyone and it puts New Zealand's reputation at risk."

Brett Hewlett, chief executive of honey exporter Comvita, backs Hutchison.

"[The industry] has got all the potential of being a very large and sustainable industry for New Zealand, reforesting New Zealand and bringing employment to poorer communities. If we could just align our interests and stop the squabbling, everyone could benefit."

There are few signs of that happening.

The industry is at war and some of the industry's biggest names, including Comvita, are embroiled in court battles. Private investigators have been hired to snoop on rivals.

Underlying it all is the question of what makes manuka honey so special an antibacterial quality claimed to have health benefits and known, by the industry body at least, as Unique Manuka Factor, or UMF.

The warring goes back to a decision last year by the Active Manuka Honey Association to step up testing to quietly identify honey producers among its membership whose product was not true to the UMF label.

Association general manager John Rawcliffe said it was an attempt to clean house, and the aim was to do the cleaning away from the public spotlight.

The outcome was anything but.

One of those targeted, manuka honey producer Watson & Son, saw the move as a commercial conspiracy by the association and three companies with directors on its executive: Comvita, Golden Hills New Zealand and Honey New Zealand.

In its statement of claim, Watson & Son alleges: "In or around March 2008, AMHA and members of its executive committee entered into an arrangement or understanding to interfere in Watson & Son's customers, Canners & Packers."

It claimed no other association member was audited so extensively, and that Comvita demanded the audit after conducting its own tests on Watson & Son's honey.

It noted Comvita and Honey New Zealand were the only two honey producers big enough to profit by the disruption of its UK distribution.

The association says its testing of Watson & Son's honey was merely to protect the UMF brand, but admitted it was alerted by testing done privately by Comvita, which in turn says it was just protecting its commercial position.

The association denies the allegations and accuses Watson & Son's Denis Watson of bitterness after his honey lost the right to use the UMF quality mark.

Watson has an important ally University of Waikato professor Peter Molan, who discovered manuka honey's antibacterial properties.

Molan has now broken publicly with the association and says the testing behind the UMF brand is unreliable, a damaging claim as he was the man who devised the tests in the first place.

The industry body is also engaged in tit-for-tat sniping with another large producer, Manuka Health a falling out which followed when the association tested the company's honey and concluded that it was not always true to label.

Although the feuding is a financial drain on the association and the companies involved, the biggest risk to the manuka honey industry comes from the amount of dubious manuka honey on the shelves, and a warring industry cannot deal with that.

Quality manuka honeys can fetch $200 a kilo, and the high prices mean there's a great temptation to misrepresent the content, said Rawcliffe.

Rawcliffe's claims are echoed elsewhere.

Molan told the Sunday Star-Times: "Two-thirds of what is being sold isn't the genuine article."

Many are asking how the industry could move forwards and suggest that a start would be a clear definition of what is manuka honey.

"No other primary industry at this time has failed to achieve this simple but critical point," Rawcliffe said in a report to the association last year.

Hewlitt would like to see a government department such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry or the Food Safety Authority take a lead.

The first steps are being taken.

The National Beekeepers Association's Bee Products Council, on which the authority has a seat, will begin consulting this month on minimum standards and a testing regime for all floral types of honey New Zealand exports many varieties.

Honey producers wishing to reassure customers their product is the real McCoy will be able to put a beekeepers association's designation on their honey labels, providing they submit to testing, said chairman Jim Edwards.

But the beekeepers association's designation would not indicate whether a particular manuka honey is rich in the antibacterial properties many consumers want.

In the absence of a government body here setting standards, many worry that an overseas regulator might do it for us to protect its consumers.

Rather than the warring easing, there are signs it could intensify as Active Manuka Honey Association's disputes have led to rivals setting up quality marks in opposition to UMF.

Waikato University plans to unveil its own testing regime and quality mark in the next few weeks in a bid to unseat UMF as the leading brand trusted by consumers.

Molan said the move was designed to save the industry and create a trusted quality mark that the manuka honey association did not control. "We are going ahead just to get some independence on this," Molan said.

He said the new university test was more accurate than the UMF tests, and the association was welcome to use the new tests, but it would not be allowed to decide who could or couldn't use it.

Rawcliffe said Molan had a vested interest. The university receives funding from Watson & Co, and its commercial arm is intending to make money from the rival to UMF.

But Molan said he was acting in the best interests of the industry: "If people are having doubts about the credibility and reliability of what they are being told, they will start to wonder if they can believe anything they have been told about manuka honey."

That threat is particularly pointed as the highest value use for manuka honey is in wound dressings, so any taint of scandal could be hugely damaging.

Molan said a quality mark from the University of Waikato would provide reassurance to consumers.

He was scathing about the other rival to UMF, the MGO test championed by Manuka Health. That test identifies the level of methylgloxal, the active substance in manuka honey, but Molan said it was "misleading", because the activity of methylgloxal in manuka honey depended on other substances in the honey, not the level of MGO alone.

There are other quality marks in existence, including the ULF mark from Australia, where honey producers are beginning to jump on the manuka bandwagon. Australia has species of manuka, including the "jelly bush".

But Comvita and Honey New Zealand, the two biggest producers, both remain backers of UMF, and have called on other producers to back the manuka honey association, which is facing steep legal bills in its battle with Watson & Co.

Without that backing, the legal bills could soon prove deeper than the association's pockets, although the whole industry is being drained of cash by the feuding.

"We are all struggling at the moment and trying to break each other," said Honey New Zealand's Matthew Pringle. "The only people who have benefited are lawyers."

- © Fairfax NZ News