Healing honey runs foul of act over label

By ROSALEEN MacBRAYNE

A Bay of Plenty company has been ordered to withdraw a new honey-based wound-healing cream from the New Zealand market because of claims it kills bacteria.

Health Ministry regulations here do not allow labels saying natural products have therapeutic value - even if it is true.

Manuka honey - so far unique to this country - is being used successfully in hospitals overseas to treat infections, burns and other wounds such as chronic leg ulcers and bedsores.

Comvita chairman Bill Bracks says 5000 tubes of Woundcare, officially launched six weeks ago by Attorney-General Margaret Wilson, have to be recalled from pharmacies and health shops.

To avoid a fine of up to $100,000, the Paengaroa company must remove wording which says manuka honey has been shown in laboratory tests to kill the seven most common bacteria found in wounds.

The ministry will allow Comvita to retain the name Woundcare, but no reference material or instructions on usage, says Mr Bracks, who hopes the product will be back on the shelves in a month.

"This happens to highlight how much of an ass the law is."

Just as it has been accepted for 400 years that lemon can cure scurvy, honey's healing properties were widely accepted.

"Yet Woundcare must be declared a medicine before it can be advertised in New Zealand. I am prohibited from telling New Zealand consumers what a product can or cannot do, yet I can sell it," says a frustrated Mr Bracks.

Backed by the National Nutritional Foods Association, he has pushed for three years for a change to the outdated 1981 Medicines Act, which controls and regulates natural products along with drugs for illness.

"This is a new world in which 60 per cent of New Zealanders take supplements. Dietary supplements are not drugs. They will not hurt you," he says.

Dealing with natural, innocuous products designed to contribute to good health under the same legislation as potentially dangerous drugs was "silly."

With Margaret Wilson's help, a case will be made to Prime Minister Helen Clark and Health Minister Annette King for a change in the regulations.

Mr Bracks says New Zealand should be capitalising on its manuka honey - used by clinicians in other countries - before interested Australians make it their own.

The honey is already being exported in significant quantities across the Tasman and packaged as Australian Medihoney.

"This is a unique New Zealand product which works so magnificently overseas, yet in its country of origin we cannot talk about it," he says.

Woundcare was labelled initially on the grounds of 15 years of research by Dr Peter Molan, who is associate professor of biochemistry at Waikato University and an international expert on the antibacterial properties of honey.