Honey mixed with sugar is being marketed as "honey," but the FDA proposed that these products should be labeled as "blends" instead of pure honey products.
Food companies who add sweeteners to their honey will now have to label the product as a "blend," Reuters reported. Only manufacturers who do not include added sweeteners will be able to label their products as "pure honey."
The proposal hopes "to advise the regulated food industry on the proper labeling of honey and honey products to help ensure that honey and honey products are not adulterated or misbranded," the agency wrote according to Reuters.
Honey is popular in the U.S.; Americans consume 400 million pounds of honey annually. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture only 149 million pounds of honey consumed in the U.S. was produced within the country, Reuters reported.
Pure honey tends to be more expensive than those enhanced with artificial sweeteners; the price hit a high of $2.12 a pound last year, the USDA said, Reuters reported.
The American Beekeeping Federation and other related groups released a petition that sparked the FDA decision. The groups called for the standard of honey products to be increased in order to promote fair trade.
The FDA rejected their request, but said they would work to tweak the policies on labeling.
"Manufacturers have 60 days to comment on the proposal before final guidelines are issued. Even then, however, guidelines are not mandatory," Reuters reported.
The FDA inspected and detained a number of honey products imported from other countries such as Mexico and Brazil to see if they had been enhanced with products such as cane or corn sugar.
A recent European study found honey bee deaths were not as high as previously believed across the continent. They found "winter mortality rates" were anywhere between 3.5 percent and 33.6 percent, PBS NewsHour reported.
