This project, commissioned under Defra’s Food Authenticity Programme, addresses a key enforcement challenge in honey authenticity testing and was jointly funded by the Government Chemist and Defra. It supports Defra’s priority to boost Britain’s food security by strengthening consumer trust and ensuring fair competition through accurate labelling. The work planned to deliver a practical framework to enable independent scrutiny of proprietary honey authenticity databases, which are often unpublished and opaque, yet underpin significant commercial testing decisions.

Lack of transparency in these databases has led to legal disputes and undermines confidence in non-targeted analytical methods used for verifying honey authenticity. Recognising this, the Government Chemist, Defra, the Food Stan

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