Toxin still found in honey samples

The neurotoxin tutin can taint comb honey and poison consumers. Photo / NZH.

Laboratory testing of honey has found widespread presence of the potentially fatal neurotoxin that poisoned 22 people in 2008.

But the Food Safety Authority says that despite some breaches of the limits, the levels are generally low.

It imposed tough controls to protect consumers from "tutin" after the 2008 incident caused by eating Coromandel comb honey produced by a hobby beekeeper - but it is now considering whether the rules telling the industry how to control tutin risk should be revoked.

The Whangamata beekeeper, Kevin Prout, who was unaware of the tutin risk, was convicted of selling food unfit for human consumption and ordered to pay $3350 in reparation to his victims. But he was not fined, because the judge blamed deregulation of the honey industry and said it was up to authorities to make sure the message about avoiding tutin risk got through to beekeepers.

Tutin gets into honey when bees collect honeydew excreted by passion vine hopper insects which have been feeding on the tutu plant. Tutin doesn't harm bees.

The authority says that of 4500 honey samples from beekeepers that had been tested by the end of April, around a quarter contained tutin. Twenty-five samples exceeded the maximum permitted level of 2mg per kg. Nine contained between 5 and 10mg/kg, which was a third to a half the level in the toxic Whangamata honey, enough to cause only "low-severity illness".

"None of this product with high levels has been sold at retail to our knowledge, with it either being further processed and retested before sale or fed back to bees."

In a review document, the authority says one option is to revoke the tutin standard, which would allow "the market to manage", leaving the industry to decide how to comply with the tutin limit.

The National Beekeepers Association's vice-president, Barry Foster, said it opposed revoking the standard because the risk to the industry would be too great. Instead it favoured placing greater reliance on testing before honey went to market.