Hi fellow Aussie beekeepers
What are the rules & regs around selling your honey?
Do you need any FDA stamp or anything?
Regards
Li Yi
Great question, liyi. Congratulations for doing your due diligence. Even for low volume sellers, there are minimum requirements.
Packaging- You must package your honey in brand new jars and lids. You can use second hand jars for gifted honey only.
Label - You can be as creative as you want on your label, but you must include your name, address and contact details, nutritional table and the Australian Product kangaroo logo with the percentage. 100% of course. You’ll need a way to identify the batch in case of a recall. That can be a date or code, anything you can trace and prove.
You don’t need a use by or best before date.
No claims of special properties such as “organic” unless you have certification, medicinal or health benefits or anything else you can’t prove.
Council approval - most councils aren’t interested in cottage honey producers, but ask your in case they have particular requirements.
DPI Food safety approval - they are focussed on commercial operations bottling tonnes of honey. No need for small operators to concern them.
Food safety - make sure you do your processing a in clean food preparation area. Most homes have the ideal facility, the kitchen. Make sure to clean it thoroughly before each session. Take precautions to prevent your hair or body fluids contaminating the honey. Hair net, gloves, face mask, clean long sleeved top.
Lastly, price your honey as the valuable, high quality product it is. You’re not competing with supermarket rubbish. Yours is bespoke featuring unique flavours different with each batch, lovingly harvested by hand.
Good luck and have fun.
Mike
2 Likes
Thanks Mike! I’ll factor these into our production!