FSA Consultation Letter, 24 January 2005

HONEY - Honey ( England ) (Amendment) Regulations 2005

The Honey ( England ) Regulations 2003, which lay down compositional and labelling requirements for honey, came into force on 25 September 2003 . It is proposed to issue amendment regulations to correct three transposition errors in the current Statutory Instrument (SI). Responses are requested by: 25 April 2005

Consultation details

These are:

• Note 1 to Schedule 1 erroneously omits ‘pressed honey' from the list of those specified products which may be described as simply ‘honey';
• Note 3 to Schedule 1 erroneously refers to ‘pressed honey' and ‘filtered honey', instead of to ‘filtered honey' and ‘baker's honey', in the list of exceptions which can be described by additional specified criteria; and
• A mis-spelling of the word physico-chemical in part (i) to Note 3 of Schedule 1.

The above are required to be corrected by an amending Statutory Instrument rather than an addendum and will ensure the regulations fully reflect the requirements of the EU Directive that they implement. To this end, the Agency has produced the following documents in relation to this amendment, on which we invite your comments:

Guidance Notes:

The guidance notes set out and clarify the requirements of the regulations and reflect the position as if the Honey ( England ) Regulations had already been amended. We will therefore not be issuing any new guidance notes to the amended regulations. However, we will be amending the existing guidance notes to refer to the amending legislation and to clarify certain sections of text, in the near future.

The Honey ( England ) (Amendment) Regulations 2005:

This draft SI corrects the errors which arose in Note 1 and Note 3 to Schedule 1.

The amendment to Note 1 will add the reserved description ‘pressed honey' to the list of specified products which may be described simply as ‘honey'.

The amendment to Note 3 will effectively add ‘pressed honey' and remove ‘bakers honey' from the list of specified products that may additionally be described by their floral, vegetable, regional, territorial or topographical origin, or by their specific quality criteria.

A further amendment will correct a mis-spelling in the word physico-chemical in Note 3. The SI will apply to England only ( Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland will be making their own separate, but similar, legislation).