A Dunedin company is developing a honey map of New Zealand in an effort to stop overseas companies branding inferior-quality honey as coming from New Zealand.
There have been claims a British beekeeper has imported manuka trees to produce a locally grown version of the highly priced New Zealand honey, while a US producer relabelled New Zealand manuka honey and sold it for six times the price of the genuine product, which sat beside the fake on some US supermarket shelves.
Oritain determined the geochemical profile, or fingerprint, of soil, which can be traced in food or an end product.
The company's operations manager, Mike Darling, said by generating a profile of elements such as soil, it was possible to tell where products such as honey, milk, wine, fruit, wool or meat came from.
By creating a honey map, Mr Darling said the industry had the data to counter false claims of authenticity, such as those made in the US.
"This map will provide critical reference data so that any honey sampled anywhere in the world can be compared to what it should look like if it truly came from New Zealand," he said.
Mr Darling said Oritain had much of the data it needed to determine the source of the honey, but would gather thousands more samples.
It would also buy and sample New Zealand-branded honey in the US and other markets to verify its country of origin.
Mr Darling said the answer lay in the bees.
"Their honey provides deep insights into their flight patterns and provides a unique geochemical fingerprint of the area where it was produced.
"Genuine New Zealand honey is chemically different to honey produced elsewhere."
Provided the reference data was available, Mr Darling said Oritain could also determine if honey from different sources had been mixed.
This was important for honey from plants such as manuka, which commanded premium prices. The stakes were high.
The Australian honey industry had taken a knock after Chinese honey contaminated with an antibiotic was branded as coming from Australia and distributed in the US.
Mr Darling said honey producers such as Waitaki apiarists Kate White and Peter Irving were already using Oritain to authenticate their honey, while wine and meat producers were also involved.
