Selling Honey and Regulations? (QLD)

[PhilK]

G'day - sorry for flooding the forum a bit recently, but I have a lot of questions!

My mate and I have two hives that we will be pulling honey from for the first time this Saturday. We are likely to have too much to use, and would love to sell some to subsidise expenses etc. We have a little market down the road who will give us a stall, but we've been doing some research into what is required to legally sell honey and it seems like a very expensive and annoyingly complicated task!

From what we have seen and been told by council, we first need to get a food manufacture licence (around $700), then whenever we extract honey we need to do so in a commercial kitchen - the council has to inspect and approve this premises. We don't have one
but can hire one nearby for a reasonably cheap fee, but they also need us to get public liability insurance... another expense.

This all seems like a lot of hassle and money, and seems to make selling small amounts of honey not really worth it (we'd surely end up with a net loss)... I have seen a lot of people selling honey at various markets - surely they're not all going through this process?

I know that differents states have different laws, but can anybody lend any advice? We thought about just selling the honey without a licence, but I imagine we could get in a fair bit of trouble especially if something (however unlikely) went wrong.

Cheers
Phil

[yantabulla]

G'day Phil,  I am an ex state government food safety officer in NSW and now consult to the industry.  As you are a beekeeper I will give you my advice for free.

Firstly and most importantly never offer yourself up to local government for any reason whatsoever.  You will be beaten senseless with red tape, bureaucracy, stupidity and fees.  Let them find you then plead ignorance.  What can they do to you over a few tubs of honey?

The information you need is here

https://www.health.qld.gov.au/public-health/industry-environment/food-safety/requirements/businesses/general-reqs/default.asp

All food businesses have to comply with 3.2.2 & 3.2.3 of the Food Standards Code.

There is nothing stopping you from making food for sale in your kitchen at home providing it is clean, free from pests and vermin and you have adequate hand washing facilities.

Some councils may choose to charge you a fee and there is information here in relation to what businesses are licensable

https://www.health.qld.gov.au/public-health/industry-environment/food-safety/licensing/licensable-businesses/default.asp

I can't see how packaging of honey can be licensed because you are not combining ingredients to make food.  The way I read the requirements is that you only need a licence if you are producing food by combining ingredients or if you are a restaurant or takeaway or a non profit club selling meals more than 12 days a year or a non profit organisation providing meals to homeless people or meals on wheels organisations.

If a regulator tells you you need to be licensed get them to direct you to do it in writing (politely) with the references to the legislation that requires it.

Some markets may require you to jump through extra hoops.  If the costs outweigh the benefits why bother.  I just put a sign in front of my house and sell from there.

I would recommend that you label your honey as required by the code.  Labelling info here

https://www.health.qld.gov.au/publications/portal/food-safety-labelling/label-buster-guide-bus.pdf

That document will make your eyes glaze over.  In summary you need

Name of food - Honey
Street address of the business
Best before date - I put 2 years
Storage instructions - e.g. Store below 25 degrees c
Nutrition information panel
Product of Australia
Weight

PM me if this doesn't make sense I may be able to help further.

Yantabulla

[superbee]

Yantabulla,
I spent a long time trying to get answers when I first started selling honey and could not ever find a answer as informative and helpful as you just posted.  Your answer would have saved me weeks.  I understand that it is for a differant area but I am still happy to see such good answer.

[yantabulla]

Thankyou Superbee.  I like helping people to sidestep bureaucracy.

[Sydney guy]

Yantabulla is it the same deal for NSW ? I was going to sell from home and wasnt going to get any license or approvals. Never thought about public liability insurance. I wouldn't like to be sued lol.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

[PhilK]

Thanks so much for the reply yantabulla! Very helpful, and I really appreciate it. Funny how they were insistant that it must be a professional kitchen, and has to have a food licence, but the way you've interpreted it makes a lot more sense!

The way my mate and I figure it, we will just package appropriately and sell - plead ignorance if get in trouble, as you suggested. One day we have an idea to make an actual business out of honey if we get enough hives etc, and that can be the day we do things 'by the book' I think!

[Wombat2]

Make your label comply - name of product (Honey) name and contact details of supplier, nutritional table (generic permitted) weight of contents, and from this year a use by date or a batch number incorporating the harvest dates and source - e.g. I use
2160113 being hive #2 and the date backwards .

If everything looks right you will be passed over for the people not doing the right thing with unlabeled jars and no supplier etc.

[PhilK]

Thanks Wombat, good tip. What expiry date would I use for honey?

Contact details, does that need an address, email, phone number? All of those/one of those?

[Wombat2]

use the batch number method - impossible to get use by date - no one knows !!! In the Pharmaceutical Industry if the manufacture has decomposition data they use it otherwise the authorities in their wisdom say 18 months. We would get batches back - open and mix all the contents - sample and assay and if within limits re-batch and send out again if under strength - top up with more active ingredient and send out again - I wouldn't worry about use by on honey ;)

[yantabulla]

Wombat & Phil. 

You could argue that honey has a shelf life of greater than two years therefore it doesn't require a best before date.  You need either a BB date or a batch number.  My recommendation would be to go with the BB date of two years to save arguments with regulators who can't interpret the food standards code and use that as the batch code so long as you have a system of traceability. I wouldn't think that it was necessary to have traceabilty back to the hive but there is nothing stopping you from doing that if you want to.

I agree with Wombat.  A dodgy label always drew me in to ask more questions.  Get your labelling right.

The basic contact details required are the business name & physical street address.  If you want to put more you can.  It is not acceptable just to have a phone number or a Facebook site as the contact details.

Sydney guy NSW is pretty much the same.  Requirements will vary from Council to Council and then again from officer to officer which is why I recommend that you stay under the radar and avoid them until they find you. 

Public liability insurance is up to you. I'm not clever enough to be a lawyer.

By the way if you make claims on your labels such as certified organic or a particular strength in terms of active honey or a particular variety then it has to be the truth.  There are serious penalties for misleading consumers.

Hope these clarifications help.

Yantabulla

[Wombat2]

Yantabulla - one reason I am (attempting to ) use the hive and date as a batch number is the new National Regulations being bandied around will required hive records to be kept showing location and movements of all material between sites. I only have one site (5000 meters bordering on natural forest National Park ) at the bottom of my garden - so I will argue the hive number will tell me everything I need to know as all materials will stay on site.

[yantabulla]

Wombat the more traceability the better and if you can do that then good on you.

[PhilK]

OK that's great thanks for all the info - we have sourced a generic nutrition label, getting our logo sorted out now.

I like the idea of the batch number Wombat, we only have 2 hives so that should be easy enough to do. We'll use an 18 month BB date I guess even though I would argue it never goes off! We were just going to say '100% raw cold extracted honey' in the ingredients list so I think that should be OK. Our 'business address' would just be our house I guess, so we should just put that address on the label?

[yantabulla]

Yes Phil,  It has to be a physical street address