3.2.8. Classification of Honey Non-Conformities According to the Country of Origin

Samples that did not conform with international and local standards, as per the country of origin, and honey type are presented in Table 5. Of the 251 non-conforming honey samples, 137, or 32.5% of samples, originated in India. This high percentage of non-conformity is in agreement with a report published by the Centre for Science and Environment, which indicated a high percentage of non-compliance in honey samples from India, with 77% identified as being adulterated with sugar syrups.

In total, 10 of the 13 honey brands failed the purity test used during a study by Dhingra (2020) [52]. However, it should be noted that the highest number of samples examined had been imported from India in the study because India greatly increased honey exports recently [53]. This could potentially introduce bias in the observations of the study. India exports honey to more than 65 countries. The United States is the biggest importer of honey, largely from India, with approximately 80% of the total imported honey being of Indian origin. The UAE is the third largest importer of honey from India with a value of USD 2.66 million, representing 3.31% of the total Indian exports [54]. In the current study, 33, or 19.5%, of 170 samples from Australia did not conform to the standards. This percentage of non-conformity is in accord with the 18% found during a study conducted by Zhou, Taylor, Salouros, and Prasad (2018) [55] on Australian honey samples. In the current study, 12 samples from New Zealand, 9 samples from Pakistan, and 8 from Turkey did not meet the legislative criteria. For blended honey, 5 of the 12 non-compliant samples originated from India. For honeycomb, out of the 10 non-conforming samples, 4 samples originated from Turkey.


**Table 5.** Number of non-conforming samples (%) according to the country of origin and type of honey.


**Table 5.** *Cont.*

\$ represents the total number of honey samples originating from the mentioned country. \$\$ represents the total number of samples of each honey type originating from the mentioned country. \$\$\$ represents the rejected samples from the total number of samples from this honey type and \$\$\$\$ the percentage of non-conformity out of the total samples from this honey type.

To better understand the results, a detailed conformity assessment is presented in Figure 1, according to the country of origin of honey samples (n = 1180). This approach was chosen only for the honey samples because of its greater sample size; it represented 88% of the total 1330 samples examined.

**Figure 1.** Origin and percent of imported honey samples (n = 1180) tested that were not compliant with UAE honey quality standards.

The honey samples originated from 5 of the 49 countries that supplied honey in this study, namely India (422), Australia (170), New Zealand (69), Germany (67), and Pakistan (53). India had the highest proportion of non-compliant samples (32.5%), while Germany had the lowest at 4.5%.

The most frequent non-compliant parameters were the sum of glucose and fructose in samples originating from India, Australia, Pakistan, and Turkey (Figure 2). On the other hand, for samples from New Zealand, the moisture content and HMF were the major non-compliant parameters.

**Figure 2.** Occurrence of non-compliant parameters in imported honey samples from countries having the greatest levels of non-compliance.
