Victoria Honey Case Study Essay

2) Labelling in honey

i) False/ Deceived Labelling

Nowadays, some of the honey in the market was illegally and purposely mislabeled which lead to misleading the consumers. This is because the failure of the government to define what true honey is, but the blame also goes to a handful of sleazy honey packers who is irresponsible. For example, some consumers raised concerns about country-of-origin labelling (CoOL) for honey products in which they suggested that imported honey is often blended with local honey or substituted for local honey to lower the prices. Other consumers also suggested that honey may be shipped through intermediate countries to disguise the true origin. Besides, consumers also confused about the meanings of the terms 'made

in Michigan got caught in the "Honeygate" sting by the immigrations and Customs Enforcement because there were millions of dollars worth of illegal honey were found mislabeled (Laasby, 2013).

Case 2: Victoria Honey produced from Turkey was distributed in Australia by a Melbourne based company called Basfood Pty Ltd. The word “Victoria” had wrong interpretation which mislead consumers to a way thinking that it was Australia-based products and then bought it.

Case 3: The infringement notice was issued by ACCC to Bera Foods due to the using of word “Honey” and including a map of Australia on the “Hi Honey” label because the ACCC had reasonable grounds to believe Bera Foods had made a false or misleading representation about the composition of Bera Foods’ “Hi Honey” product, in contravention of the Australian Consumer Law. This is because although “Hi Honey” was labelled as honey but the product was not 100% produced by honey bees. Furthermore, the inclusion of a prominent map of Australia on the Hi Honey label may have led consumers to think that the product was produced in Australia when this was not the true (AFN Staff Writers,