Aiming to control the quality and safety, the Republic Food Safety Inspection Service recently sampled honey in retail stores on the Republic of Srpska market. Inspectors took 17 samples of various types of honey, like meadow, acacia, blossom, forest, linden and mountain honey, from retail stores. The origin of honey was from various countries: Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During the sampling special care was given to the retail price of honey, that is to the products with lower prices, which can be a basis for doubting its quality.

After the analyses done at the Veterinary Institute „Dr Vaso Butozan“, two honey samples originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina and one sample originating from Croatia were determined to be faulty, because the first contained water, the third due to diastase activity which was determined to be under the regulated values and third due to containing reducing sugars and sucrose. In two cases subjects asked for a super-analysis and withdrew from circulation the products in question until it is finished, while the third case resulted in the inspector decision to destroy honey in the amount of around three kilograms.

The purpose of work inspection services is to secure the circulation of quality and safe food on the domestic market, and to stop every negative occurrence that represents a disloyal competition to domestic producers.

We advise consumers to buy only from registered producers, in that manner they help and support domestic beekeepers, and we urge them to report to inspection service the cases in which there are businesses that sell honey of dubious quality, without declaration and outside of stores.