Certification
Independent industrial and academic organizations in New Zealand have responded to the need for reliable standards by establishing certification procedures. It is important to note that certification standards go beyond procedures to measure activity to include all steps in the production, harvesting, processing and packaging of manuka honey. Certified honeys are only packaged in New Zealand, and their activity is only measured at the level of retail jars, not bulk drums.
Current certification standards are the Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) and the newer Molan Gold Standard (MGS). The activity of manuka (and Australian jellybush) honey is measured using versions of the original assay reported by Dr. Molan in 1991 (Allen KL et al, J Pharm Pharmacol. 1991 Dec;43(12):817-22). This type of assay is known in bacteriology as the agar well diffusion assay, and uses Staphylococcus aureus as indicator bacteria and phenol as standard. For example, a 10+ active manuka will have a bacteria-killing activity equivalent to a 10% solution of phenol. As with any other biological test, and particularly those based on live organisms, variability can be significant. Common practices to mitigate variability in microbiological assays are to use pure standards and to process enough samples to provide statistically significant values.
The most established organization that certifies manuka honeys is the Active Manuka Honey Association, holder of the Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) trademark, and which centralizes all testing in a single laboratory, New Zealand Laboratory Services Ltd. The release of the Molan Gold Standard represents the emergence of a second certifying body, with the University of Waikato acting as holder of the patents (IP) and official reference laboratory
Both the UMF and MGS rating systems are based on the same biological assay, but with the Molan Gold Standard emphasizing the importance of using pure phenol as standard and statistical methods to reduce variability. Aging of phenol solutions and impurities can lead to lower effective concentrations, and thus artificially high activity levels in the manuka honey tested. At the technical level, as currently formulated we see the Molan Gold Standard not as a radical change with respect to the UMF standard but as a series of improvements that will increase the reliability and accuracy of the assay. We see the biggest impact taking place in the area of commercialization of the IP. Unlike the Active Manuka Honey Association (AMHA), which uses a membership system, the Molan Standard will be available to beekeeping operations on a royalty basis. We hope that this approach will help smaller operations that are currently unable to afford the AMHA membership fees. Also, the Molan Standard will be made available to regulatory and consumer protection agencies outside of New Zealand, an important step towards dealing with the unethical practices discussed in the previous section. Finally, we hope that the royalty fees collected from licensing the Molan Standard will be directly channeled to research in the field.