Trading Places – Codex Alimentarius Explained
- Dave Black
- 18 hours ago
- 6 min read
It’s a big word, from an ancient language, but if you have ever traded honey, or any food, then you will have likely encountered Codex Alimentarius. The international food standards play an integral role in how honey is traded globally – and even what is deemed ‘honey’. What’s the point of it though, and is it doing its job sufficiently?
By Dave Black
For thousands of years bees of various kinds have been kept (or hunted) for honey. The business of apiculture provides employment and incomes in anything from multinational corporations to family enterprises, or it may form part of indigenous subsistence communities’ livelihoods, but what makes apiculture more than a purely personal endeavour is the social phenomena we call ‘trade’. Otherwise, you’ve just got pets.
Ancient records document a trade in honey recorded as payments in taxes, duties, and tolls in various parts of the world for at least the last 4000 years, and from these earliest times regulations or standards were established to try and ensure the exchange could be conducted without the market being ruined by fraud. A sustainable market relies on agreement about what things are and therefore what their value might be. Economists will talk about ‘perfect’ information, or at least, no ‘hidden’ information, as one of the defining characteristics of a properly functioning market.
For us in the 21st century that agreement is recorded as the ‘Codex Alimentarius’, although you may not see it referred to as such. The name is Latin; a codex is just a set of rules or standards, and alimentarius are things we eat, so the Codex Alimentarius is simply the ‘Food Standards’ for trading in food, all food, including honey. The historical origin of this Codex can be traced back to the Codex Alimentarius Austriacus, a collection of standards and product descriptions for a large number of foods created in Europe by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the end of the 19th century. In the late 1950s the Austrian Codex was developed into a pan-European Codex Alimentarius Europaeus.
Uniting Nations
After the end of the second world war most nations recognised that one of the drivers of the reconstruction and future world security was the interdependency of international trade, particularly for food. Following the Allied nations ‘Four Powers’ declaration (US, UK, China & the Soviet Union) that established the United Nations, in 1943 USA’s President Roosevelt convened the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) founding conference in Hot Springs, Virginia. There, representatives of 34 countries set out a programme to free the world from hunger and malnutrition.
The FAO was formally established in 1945 and the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1948, and both organisations by 1950 had realised that the food regulations in individual countries were often conflicting and contradictory and sometimes lacked a scientific basis. This undermined their goal of improving the global trade of agricultural commodities that was essential to the post-war reconstruction and world food security, so it became self-evident that these important standards were harmonised.
In 1961 The council of the Codex Alimentarius Europaeus adopted a resolution proposing that its work on food standards be taken over by the FAO and the WHO and the 11th FAO Conference established the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) as a joint FAO/WHO structure to do exactly that, creating the Codex Alimentarius itself in 1962. The CAC has 188 Member Countries—any UN country can join the CAC merely by notifying their intent to do so. There is also one Member Organisation (the European Union), and more than 243 Observers (intergovernmental organisations, non-governmental organisations and United Nations agencies) who are not members but may contribute too. For example, New Zealand is a ‘member’; Apimondia is an ‘observer’ (but not the only apicultural observer).
Encoding a future
The Codex standards have become influential far beyond their original scope, serving as benchmarks for resolving international trade disputes and helping countries form workable national food safety legislation, and much of that strength comes from their inclusivity. For international trade and the World Trade Organisation both Sanitary/Phytosanitary Standards Agreements and the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreements recognise the international importance of the Codex standards in order to prevent unilateral sanitary, phytosanitary and other technical standards becoming unjustified obstacles to trade. But, the problem with becoming an essential standard is that, well, you become essential.
The Commission, and the Codex, are of course a ‘work in progress’ and always will be, and this is certainly true for the Honey Codex. The standard for honey, CXS 12-1981, was adopted in 1981 and last amended in 2022. The intention is that an international ‘codex’ standard, when it exists, will form the basis of, if not supplant, individual national legislation (but keep in mind English is not the world’s only language). At a minimum, national regulations certainly should not contradict the message of the Codex.
For honey, the ‘international definition (from the Codex) reads [with my emphasis], “Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature.” If what you have is not exactly this, the trading world is not obliged to accept it as honey.
The ‘local’ FSANZ definition that carries the legal force here and in Australia reads, “honey means the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of blossoms or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which honey bees collect, transform and combine with specific substances of their own, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature.” Substantially the same. If you want to sell something called ‘Honey’ it must meet this definition.
While we often dream otherwise, apiculture is not just about managing honey from European honey bees. In other parts of the world there are other apis bees too, and even other bees (non-apis) that are used in the ‘culture’ of agricultural and apicultural products just as apis bees are; honey, pollen, and wax don’t just come from European honey bees. It’s also possible that these goods are being ‘cultured’ by, and harvested from, unmanaged bees.
The case of our Australian neighbour reveals both the International Honey Commission, (IHC) origins of the Codex measurements (it’s really the European Honey Commission[i]), and the ‘still-work-to-do’ nature of the Code, which requires, for one thing, that ‘honey’ comes from ‘honey bees’. Which species of honey bee? Only Apis ‘honey’ bees? Only A. mellifera? Many countries that trade honey from other Apis and non-apis bees (like Australia’s native stingless bees) reasonably want the standard amended to facilitate that market[ii]. Brazil (2014), Malaysia (2017[iii]), Tanzania (2017), Indonesia (2018), Argentina, (2019), East Africa, (Ethiopia, and Uganda, 2020), Kenya (2021) and Australia, (2024[iv]) have passed their own local measures to govern the trade in stingless bee honey. ‘What about us?’ is the cry.
Everyone has a ‘special’ case. It’s not just the bees. While the CAC wrestles with honey adulteration and problems defining unifloral and botanical/geographical abound,[v] heather honey (a European staple) has provision for a special ‘tolerance’ for high moisture (23%) in the Codex (if it’s from Calluna plants, but not Erica!), but no other honey, regardless of bee or plant can contain more than 20% (New Zealand and Australia’s’ standard says 21%). Ten specific honeys are allowed a higher sucrose content; no New Zealand honey has made the list. And don’t mention the labels. Keeping up with trade descriptions and the required labelling information for an international market is a never-ending task.
The idea that commerce is supposed to be busy preventing world war might take some getting used to nowadays, but certainly global trade evolves much more quickly than global diplomacy. No wonder beekeepers like to stick their head into some hives and ‘get away from it all’.
Dave Black is a commercial-beekeeper-turned-hobbyist, now retired. He is a regular science writer providing commentary on “what the books don't tell you”, via his Substack Beyond Bee Books, to which you can subscribe here.
References
[i]Bogdanov, S., Martin, P., Lullmann, C., 1997. Harmonised Methods of the European Honey Commission. Apidologie Extra Issue, 1–59.
[ii]Souza, B., Roubik, D., Barth, O., Heard, T., Enríquez, E., Carvalho, C., VILLAS-BôAS, Jer., Marchini, L., Locatelli, J., Persano-Oddo, L., Almeida-Muradian, L., Bogdanov, S., Vit, P., 2006. Composition of stingless bee honey: Setting Quality Standards. Interciencia Vol31/Iss.12. pp867-875
[iii]Malaysian Standard Kelulut (Stingless bee) honey - Specification. MS 2683:2017 ICS:67.180.10
[iv]Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code – Standard 2.8.3 – Native bee honey. Authorised Version F2024L00893 registered 18/07/2024
[v]Thrasyvoulou, A., Tananaki, C., Goras, G., Karazafiris, E., Dimou, M., Liolios, V., Kanelis, D., Gounari, S., 2018. Legislation of honey criteria and standards. Journal of Apicultural Research 57, 88–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2017.1411181
Comments