Project announcement: Authenticity of Swiss honey

摘要

The fight against fraud belongs to the strategic objectives of the Food Safety Unit of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (SFOPH). Moreover, SFOPH has the legal duty to establish recommendations about the evaluation and analysis of food commodities. Thus, it is the objective of the SFOPH to support research, aim-ing at the development of authentication methods. In this context, the SFOPH launched since 2001 two projects, aiming at developing methods for analytical trace-ability of wine and cheese. According to the Swiss as well as the international honey directives, honey should be authentic in respect to botanical and geographical origin. However, there are no modern methods to ensure this aspect of honey authenticity. In cooperation with the SFOPH, the Swiss Federal Research Centre for Animal Products (SFRCAP) is undertaking a new study on the authenticity of the botanical and geographical origin of honey.