Austria trials DNA testing to uncover honey fraud

At a laboratory in Austria’s mountainous Tyrol province, scientists are DNA testing about 100 honey samples a month to find out about their composition—and in some instances to find out whether or not they have been adulterated.

With faux honey flooding markets, and just a few European laboratories operating such evaluation, the small Austrian firm Sinsoma started providing the exams two years in the past.

“It’s actually one thing new for the honey market,” mentioned Corinna Wallinger, head of gross sales at Sinsoma.

It’s important that know-how “all the time strikes ahead—simply because the counterfeiters” do, she added.

Honey can’t have elements akin to water or cheap sugar syrups—which could increase its quantity—added to it, in response to EU laws.

However exams have proven that’s frequent apply.

Between 2021 and 2022, 46% of the honey examined underneath an EU investigation because it entered the bloc was flagged as doubtlessly adulterated, up from 14% within the 2015-17 interval.

Of the suspicious consignments, 74% had been of Chinese language origin.

Beekeepers’ livelihoods threatened

Looking for to raised detect fraud, Austria’s well being and meals security company (AGES) used DNA testing for the primary time this yr and remains to be evaluating the outcomes.

European grocery store chain SPAR additionally ordered DNA exams for its honey.

The chain put its honeys—taken off the cabinets late final yr in Austria for testing—again after they handed DNA exams and one other evaluation.

Moreover dishonest shoppers, faux honey threatens the livelihood of beekeepers, who wrestle to compete with the far decrease costs of imported honey—typically blended from numerous nations—and are demanding simpler testing.

“We do not have an opportunity in any respect,” mentioned Matthias Kopetzky, proprietor of the Wiener Bezirksimkerei, which takes care of as much as 350 hives in Vienna, as bees buzzed round him on a meadow overlooking the capital.

Whereas the European Union is the world’s high honey producer after China, it’s also the second-biggest importer after america.

A lot of the bloc’s honey imports come from Ukraine, China and Argentina, in response to EU information.

An EU directive adopted final yr stipulates that honey labels from mid-2026 should element the nations of origin, versus merely referencing a “mix of EU and non-EU honeys”.

Beekeepers like Kopetzky hope the brand new rule will increase shopper consciousness.

Brussels additionally arrange a bunch of specialists, with a mandate till 2028, to “harmonize strategies to detect adulteration in honey and hint the product again to the harvesting producer or importer”.

Rigorous course of

Austria’s Sinsoma has specialised in DNA testing.

“Honey is filled with DNA traces, of data from the surroundings the place bees collected the nectar. Each honey has a novel DNA profile,” Wallinger mentioned.

When a honey pattern lacks a variety of DNA traces or for instance incorporates a excessive proportion of DNA traces from rice or corn—which bees don’t frequent—this means a honey is just not real, she added.

Co-founded by Wallinger in 2018, Sinsoma now employs a few dozen folks working within the small laboratory room and adjoining open workplace area within the quiet city of Voels close to Innsbruck.

Sinsoma expenses beekeepers 94 euros ($103) for a fundamental DNA take a look at concentrating on vegetation—about half of what a basic pollen take a look at would usually value, she mentioned.

For the DNA profile, beekeepers additionally get a QR code which permits shoppers to see precisely which plant species the bees making the honey have frequented, she mentioned.

Consultants warn the DNA methodology can detect sure sorts of fraud however not all, and {that a} rigorous technique of validation is required to make sure reliable outcomes.

Wallinger acknowledged the necessity for standardization of the strategies however mentioned this can take time.

“It’s all the time considerably of a difficulty—and that is additionally the case on the EU degree,” she mentioned.

“When you all the time wait till you should use a standardized methodology to uncover a faux honey, then you’ll all the time be lagging behind what counterfeiters are doing.”

© 2025 AFP