How Honey Traceability Helps Food Businesses Meet the Updated EU Breakfast Directives

The countdown is on for the “Breakfast Directives” which come into full effect on 14th June this year.  Implemented in national law on 14th December 2025, this European Commission's Directive (EU) 2024/1438 aims to help consumers make healthier and more informed food choices about foods commonly found on their breakfast tables. Over the next five months we’ll look at the different foods covered and examine the decisions that food companies need to make in order to be fully compliant with the updated regulations.  We’ll start this series with everyone’s favourite natural sweetener, honey.

The EU’s Breakfast Directives, particularly the revisions to the Honey Directive (Directive 2001/110/EC as amended by Directive (EU) 2024/1438), place traceability at the centre of compliance. These changes significantly tighten origin labelling, composition verification, and fraud prevention requirements for honey placed on the EU market. Implementing robust honey traceability systems is no longer just best practice: it’s essential for regulatory conformity, supply chain protection, and brand integrity.

1. Traceability as the Backbone of Origin Labelling Compliance

The updated directive replaces broad labelling statements such as “blend of EU honeys” or “blend of non-EU honeys” with a mandatory list of individual countries of origin, in descending order of weight, including percentages, delivering complete transparency of origin.

How traceability supports compliance:

• Accurate origin assignment for each batch, including multicounty blends, which is essential because all countries contributing to a blend must appear in the same main visual field.  
• Precise percentage allocation for each contributing origin, which becomes mandatory under the revised directive.  
• Automated auditing trails to demonstrate how origin proportions were calculated, necessary when tolerance thresholds apply.  

2. Supporting Analytical Verification and Fraud Detection

The EU’s amendments directly respond to widespread findings of honey adulteration.

New measures require:

• Advanced authenticity testing, including mass spectrometric, isotopic, and authenticity profile comparisons.
• A future set of harmonised EU-wide analytical methods by 2028.
• An expert platform, of which Intertek is a member, to support method development and strengthen fraud detection oversight.

How traceability helps meet these requirements:

• Links analytical results (e.g., pollen analysis, HMF, diastase, conductivity) to individual lots, helping verify botanical and geographical origin as required by Annex II and forthcoming delegated acts.
• Ensures data integrity when comparing lab reports against declared origins and compositions.
• Provides documentation to authorities during heightened border and market controls.

3. Traceability Ensures Correct Use of Legal Sales Names and Honey Categories

The directive maintains strict definitions for honey types (e.g. blossom honey). Revisions also remove or reclassify certain categories, e.g., filtered honey has been eliminated from EU marketing.

How traceability supports this:

• It links processing steps (e.g., heating, filtration) to batch records, ensuring no prohibited treatments (such as excessive heating or ultra‑filtration) are applied.
• Ensures accurate designation on labels by recording process level attributes, a requirement repeatedly emphasised in both the core directive and amendments.

4. Meeting Documentation Expectations During Official Controls

The revised directives anticipate stricter inspections, documentation checks, and controls at EU borders and within Member States.

Compliant traceability systems provide:

• Complete batch level traceback and trace forward records, demonstrating compliance with EU composition and labelling rules.
• Evidence that internationally recognised validated and accredited methods were used for composition and authenticity testing until new harmonised methods are adopted.
• Data consistency across operators in the supply chain – critical where multiple intermediaries handle the honey.

5. Enhancing Consumer Trust and Reducing Commercial Risk

The EU positions the updated directives as tools to help consumers make healthier and more informed choices. With increasing enforcement against adulteration and misleading origin claims, traceability plays a strategic commercial role:  

• It mitigates the risk of market withdrawals, sanctions, and reputational damage across the honey supply chain from hive to retail shelf.
• It allows technical and marketing teams to confidently communicate quality and authenticity, backed by structured evidence.

Summary

With the revised directives now imminent, honey businesses must move from reactive compliance to proactive control.

Intertek’s HoneyTrace™ hive-to-jar traceability solution integrates blockchain-enabled supply chain transparency with advanced analytical verification. This approach enables:

• Real-time visibility across sourcing, blending, and distribution.
• Secure documentation of country-of-origin percentages.
• Seamless linkage between laboratory testing and declared claims.
• Audit-ready reporting aligned with EU regulatory expectations.
• Reduced fraud exposure and enhanced brand protection.

By combining regulatory insight, laboratory expertise, and digital traceability infrastructure, Intertek supports honey producers, packers, traders, and retailers in navigating the revised EU framework with confidence.

With full applicability approaching rapidly, now is the time to assess your traceability maturity, close data gaps, and ensure your supply chain is inspection-ready.

Are you prepared for 14 June? HoneyTrace™ provides the structured, defensible, and scalable framework needed to meet the updated EU Breakfast Directives and safeguard your market access.

For more information on how Intertek can help visit: HoneyTrace | Hive to Jar Traceability Solution.