How to Choose Raw Honey in Canada: Grade, Origin and Labels

A jar of honey on a shelf gives away very little. Colour says something about floral source and nothing about quality. Price tracks packaging as often as contents. The label is the only real evidence a shopper has, and in Canada most of it is regulated.

What Canada means by a grade

Honey grades in Canada are set out in the Canadian Grade Compendium, Volume 6, incorporated by reference under the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations and administered by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

There are three grades, and the naming is where most shoppers go wrong.

• Canada No. 1, Canada No. 2 and Canada No. 3 apply to honey of Canadian origin.
• No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, without the word Canada, apply to imported honey and to blends.

One word changes the meaning. A jar marked No. 1 is not a Canadian jar marked down. It is a different category.

The grades separate on moisture and on flavour. Canada No. 1 holds not more than 17.8 percent moisture, or 18.6 percent if pasteurised. Canada No. 2 allows 18.6 percent, or 20 percent pasteurised. Canada No. 3 allows 20 percent. Moisture governs shelf stability, because honey much above 20 percent water is far more likely to ferment.

On flavour, the Compendium requires that Canada No. 1 have a flavour characteristic of its colour class, free from any objectionable flavour, aroma or taint. Canada No. 2 permits a flavour that may be slightly off, provided the honey flavour is not substantially impaired. The gap between the top two grades is sensory as much as laboratory.

Colour is a class, not a ranking

Every graded jar also carries a colour class. For consumer prepackaged honey the CFIA sets four: White, Golden, Amber and Dark, measured on the Pfund scale in millimetres. White runs to 30, Golden from 30 to 50, Amber from 50 to 85, and Dark above 85. Bulk containers use a six class version that adds Extra White, Light Amber and Dark Amber.

Colour reflects the floral sources behind the honey and the season. It is not a quality ladder. A Dark jar and a White jar can both be Canada No. 1. Darker usually means stronger tasting. It never means lower grade.

Ontario has its own grade names

Honey packed and sold within Ontario falls under Ontario Regulation 119/11, made under the Food Safety and Quality Act, 2001. It uses Ontario No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, with the same four colour classes. Retail containers over 150 grams must show the packer's name and full address, the word honey or miel, the grade and colour class, and the net weight. Farm gate honey is exempt from grading.

Origin, and two claims that are not the same

Country of origin is tightly written. CFIA labelling requirements set out three cases. Canadian honey may be labelled Product of Canada or Canadian honey. Imported honey carries Product of followed by the country. A blend must declare itself, in the form A Blend of Canadian and [Country] Honey, with the countries named in descending order of their proportion.

That last rule is worth memorising. If a label names two countries, the first listed is the larger share. If Canada appears second, most of the jar is not Canadian.

Origin wording is also policed outside food law. Competition Bureau guidance sets two thresholds. Product of Canada requires that at least 98 percent of the total direct costs behind the good were incurred in Canada. Made in Canada requires at least 51 percent, plus a qualifying statement such as Made in Canada from imported ingredients. Both require that the last substantial transformation happened in Canada.

Why single source is a traceability claim

In 2018 the CFIA ran a targeted surveillance project on honey authenticity. Of 240 samples collected across Canada, 188 were satisfactory under both test methods, or 78.3 percent. The other 52, at 21.7 percent, failed one or both. The agency reported that all domestic samples passed, and that every unsatisfactory result belonged to imported product. The work kept nearly 12,800 kilograms of adulterated honey off the Canadian market.

The CFIA states the rule plainly. Adding foreign sugars such as corn, rice or cane sugar syrup to a food represented as honey is adulteration, and adulterated honey cannot be sold as honey in Canada. Two laboratory methods do the detection. Stable isotope ratio analysis, known as SIRA, finds C4 sugars such as cane and corn syrup. Nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR, finds those plus C3 sugars from rice, beets, barley and wheat.

Adulteration is a supply chain problem rather than a jar problem. The longer and more mixed the chain from source to jar, the more points there are at which a substitution can happen. Single source shortens that chain to something a packer can account for. That is the real argument for it, and it is about traceability, not taste.

The word raw, and what it is not

Canada's honey rules define the grade name, the colour class, the common name, the net quantity and the country of origin. They do not define the word raw. There is no legal threshold behind it and no inspection attached to it.

Conventionally it signals honey that has not been pasteurised and has not been taken above roughly 40 degrees Celsius at any stage. Pasteurised honey is typically held between 63 and 75 degrees, which is why the grade table gives it a higher moisture allowance. Because the term is unregulated, two jars marked raw can have very different thermal histories.

The international reference point is the Codex Alimentarius Standard for Honey, CXS 12-1981. Codex states that honey sold as such shall not have added to it any food ingredient, including food additives, and that no additions shall be made other than honey. It further states that honey shall not be heated or processed to such an extent that its essential composition is changed or its quality is impaired. It also restricts the removal of pollen.

The practical move is to stop reading raw as a grade and start reading it as a claim that needs company. Raw beside a Canada No. 1 grade, a named colour class, a single origin and a packer's full address is a claim with structure around it. Raw on its own is a word.

Crystallisation is not a fault

Honey that turns grainy or sets solid has not gone off. Crystallisation is the ordinary behaviour of a supersaturated sugar solution, and the speed depends on the ratio of glucose to fructose in the floral source. Honeys higher in glucose set faster. Standing the jar in warm water returns it to a pour. We answer the common questions about setting and storage in our FAQ.

A checklist for the shelf

1. Find the grade. Canada No. 1 means Canadian. No. 1 without the word Canada means imported or blended.
2. Find the colour class. White, Golden, Amber or Dark. Read it as flavour, not as rank.
3. Read the origin line. If two countries appear, the first named is the larger share.
4. Look for a packer name and a full address. Ontario requires both on retail containers over 150 grams.
5. Check the net weight. CFIA consumer sizes are 375 g or less, 500 g, 750 g, 1 kg, 1.5 kg, 2 kg, 3 kg and 5 kg.
6. Read raw, pure and natural as unregulated words, then weigh them against the regulated words beside them.

How we apply this to our own jars

Hey Honey Farms sells one thing. A gift box holding two 600 gram jars, 1,200 grams in total, of single source Ontario wildflower honey.

We select it as Grade 1 golden, raw and unpasteurised. It is never heated beyond its natural state, nothing is added, and it is never blended. We rest it, then hand pack it in small batches, and every jar is tied by hand. The family behind Hey Honey Farms carries a farming legacy that goes back to 1980.

We are deliberate about the verbs. We choose the honey, we rest it, and we finish the box. How the boxes are put together sits on our process page, and the background on our story. The box itself is the single source Ontario raw honey gift box.