Wisconsin Certified Pure Honey
February 12, 2015, Sweet Mountain Farm, is pleased to announce that it has received its Wisconsin Pure Honey certification. Notice carefully, the certificate number is 2. Yes, we are one of only two Wisconsin honey producers that can boldly and proudly use the label “Wisconsin Pure Honey.” Certification was not easy. A fructose, glucose, and sucrose analyses was completed by CTL, Inc. in Colfax, Wisconsin. A honey sample was also sent to Siratech, a testing laboratory in Kyle, Texas for a Stable Carbon Isotope Ratio Analysis (SIRA). SIRA is the official test for determining if C4 sugars (corn, cane or sorghum) have been added to the honey.
How do you know for sure that the jar marked honey is the sweet substance that bees make? Since bees collect nectar from numerous plants all over the world, honey can vary from one plant to the next and from one region to the next. The varieties are nearly endless making it difficult to define how pure honey should look or how it should taste.
According to Steve Ingham, Administrator of the Wisconsin Department of Food Safety, “The “tools” being used in the world of economic adulteration of honey are fairly sophisticated. This means that the analytical methods needed to catch adulteration are sophisticated, too. In effect, there is an “arms race” between those who are adulterating honey, and those who are trying to catch them. The adulterants used are primarily carbohydrates. At one level of scrutiny, the carbohydrates used in this adulteration are indistinguishable from the carbohydrates naturally in honey. So it takes a very “high tech” or special method, called Stable Carbon Isotope Ratio Analysis, to catch the more sophisticated adulteration schemes. There are only two labs in the US that are performing this assay, and they are very specialized (they don’t do a wide variety of other analyses).”
Pure honey has increasingly become more expensive which makes it vulnerable to exploitation. Strong financial incentives exist for packers to stretch honey with cheaper syrups. The Isotope ratio of corn is very different from nectar yielding an immediate determination when honey has been grossly adulterated.
Sweet Mountain Farm is proud to advertise that our honey tastes like the nectar gathered on Washington Island and Wisconsin has certified that our honey is pure.