British company in battle to keep right to make manuka honey
Producer Rowse is fighting a legal application from beekeepers in New Zealand to trademark the variety
A BRITISH firm has become embroiled in an international legal battle over who is entitled to produce manuka uka honey, The Sunday Telegraph h can disclose.
The honey manufacturer Rowse has instructed lawyers to fight an application by the
New Zealand Manuka Honey Appellation Society to trademark both the manuka honey name as well as what actually constitutes the variety.
It is feared beekeepers from m New Zealand want to ensure only honey produced in their country ntry can carry the title.
But the move could drive up prices i of the honey, famous for its antimicrobial, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. A single jar can cost as much as hundreds of pounds depending on whether it meets certain criteria.
The honey takes its name from the Maori word for Leptospermum scoparium, a flowering shrub European honey bees forage on to make the honey.
While the manuka tree, also known as a tea tree, grows uncultivated in New Zealand and Australia, it has also been grown in the UK for the production of manuka honey.
The honey has proven particularly popular after celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Kourtney Kardashian and tennis star Novak Djokovic have praised its superfood properties.
The New Zealand government has funded a major campaign to protect its country’s production of the honey by filing a series of trademark certifications in Britain, the United States, Europe and China.
The move has enraged Australian manuka producers, who lodged opposition papers alongside Rowse’s documents with the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO).
In 2017, the IPO approved the certification trademark, a mechanism used to ensure a product using a specific name meets strict requirements. The IPO will hold a hearing into the dispute in the next few months.
Jonathan Jones, managing director of trading at Tregothnan, a Cornish country garden estate that has produced manuka honey for 20 years, said: “If they want our manuka trees back then we want our European bees back also. You can’t make manuka honey without European honey bees.
“So the honey is as much European as it is from New Zealand.
“The Kiwis and Australians need to calm down with a good cup of our tea and accept that we will continue to sell our unique manuka floral honey.”
At the crux of the issue is what constitutes manuka, as there is no official definition. The New Zealand-based Unique Manuka Factor Honey Association has created a Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) trademark that allows producers to use the abbreviation on their jars if the honey meets certain quality criteria.
However, there is currently nothing to stop producers and retailers selling honey labelled as manuka with little evidence to support it.
MGO, or methylglyoxal, is the magic ingredient in manuka honey, with welldocumented antibacterial and antimicrobial properties. Rowse sells a 225g jar of “100+ MGO” manuka honey for around £10, but for a Rowse jar of the same size containing “500+ MGO” manuk manuka honey the price is double. Se Selfridges is selling 230g pots of Rare Harvest New Zealand Manuka Honey MGO 1700+ for £1,349.
A spokesman for Rowse said: “While we currently only source manuka honey from New Zealand and are a significant purchaser of highq quality New Zealand manuka honey, ho Rowse believes this certific tification trademark application would woul have a negative impact on compe competition, restrict global supply and po potentially result in significant price i i increases for UK consumers.”
‘If they want our manuka trees back then we want our European bees back. The honey is as much European as it is from New Zealand’