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Analytic testing of honey Test to verify conformity with the limits established by law What is honey? According to the definition given by the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission "Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature”. This definition
has been reiterated in European Council Directive 2001/110/EC of 20
December 2001, transposed into Italian law by Legislative Decree no.
179 of 21 May 2004 (Official Gazette no. 168 of 20.07.04), which establishes
the compositional characteristics to which honey must conform in order
to be marketed as such or used in products intended for human
consumption (see table).
To verify a honey’s conformity with regulatory limits, the official testing methods described in the annex to the decree of 25 July 2003 issued by the Italian Ministry for Agricultural and Forestry Policies (Official Gazette no. 185 of 11.08.03) are applied. The limits established by law define a honey meeting the minimum standard of quality from a physicochemical standpoint. Any nonconformities detected may be due to deterioration (aging or overheating), qualitative deficiencies (presence of impurities) or gross adulteration of the product. In this respect, moisture and hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) content are the most indicative parameters: the former determines whether the product will store well and the latter indicates the degree of freshness. Generally speaking, however, conformity with compositional standards is not per se a guarantee of the product’s quality, since such standards appear in some cases to be excessively lax (for example in the case of moisture and hydroxymethylfurfural content) and in other cases they do not take account of the peculiar characteristics of some unifloral honeys. In conclusion, where the aim is to protect and optimise the quality of honey, analytic testing should be construed in the broadest sense: it embraces a complex of evaluations which transcend the parameters expressly indicated by law and regard sensory characteristics, botanical origin, microbiological characteristics, geographical specificity and genuineness. Sensory analysis Sensory or organoleptic analysis allows a honey to be assessed in terms of appearance, odour, taste and texture. It provides information that is complementary to the data obtained through traditional analyses regarding botanical origin and is also a means for assessing defects and qualities that would not otherwise be detectable. Apart from the presentation of the label, it is the only level of evaluation available to the consumer. To obtain a complete organoleptic profile of honey, descriptive sensory analysis is used, whereas sensory analysis of conformity is used to evaluate whether the honey meets the minimum organoleptic requirements defined by Italian Legislative Decree 179/2004 (“ … honey must not have any off-flavours or off-odours and it must not have initiated a process of fermentation …”). Honey is thus classified according to the presence/absence of defects: impurities, extraneous odours and flavours, fermentation. Plus, in the case of unifloral honeys, an assessment is made of conformity with reference sensory profiles. Botanical and geographical origin Pollen analysis, or palynological analysis, by identifying a pollen spectrum corresponding to the floristic association of the area where the honey was produced, provides important information about the botanical and geographical origin of the product examined. Palynological verification of the botanical designation of origin is completed with a sensory analysis and determination of the physicochemical parameters which are influenced by the botanical origin of honey (colour, pH, acidity, electrical conductivity or ash, enzymes, sugar spectrum). Depending on the specific botanical origin, one parameter may be more indicative than another. The table below shows, in reference to the most common unifloral honeys for which a characterisation sheet has been drawn up, the parameters judged to be most significant for the purpose of evaluating the unifloral nature of the honey.
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