 Welcome everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm your host and the coordinator of the 2022 field of fork webinar series. This is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. This is the seventh year that we've done the series and we're really glad you all have joined us today. Spring is coming and so we're looking forward to all those wonderful things of spring. This next slide shows our upcoming webinars. I will be visiting with you next week about storing to composting foods. And after that, we will be hearing from Esther McGinnis who's an associate professor and extension horticulturalist. She will be talking about gardening to fight hunger in our communities. The next slide shows our webinar controls. Because of our large number of participants we invite you to post your comments in the chat. So we are going to practice finding and using the chat and some of you have already started doing this. So click to open the chat and type in your city and state or country. So we have someone from Manitoba so welcome. And while you're continuing to do that I would like to provide an acknowledgement. The program is sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's agricultural marketing service. And I will ask all of you to complete a very short online survey. It will be emailed to you right after today's webinar. And as a thank you I will be providing prizes to the lucky winners of the random drawings. Be sure to include your complete address on the follow up form. And don't forget to include your city, state and zip code. And now I am really happy to introduce our guest speaker. Shannon Coleman currently serves as an assistant professor and state extension specialist in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Iowa State University. And Dr. Coleman's extension and outreach work includes developing and disseminating food safety curricula and resources for emerging very small and small food manufacturers in Iowa. So welcome Shannon and it's all yours. Good afternoon everyone. In today's presentation I will be discussing with you food safety best management practices for usage, producing and bottling honey. This same presentation is has been delivered to an on campus class that we have here for beekeeping and honey production, as well as the Great Plains master beekeepers. To provide to you an overview for today's presentation, I would first start off with the definition of standard of identity of honey. I will then provide you an overview of various state regulations here in the North Central region of the United States. I will then review food safety considerations on the consumer and as well as food safety hazards in general, and then I provide some guidance as far as food safety management practices while bottling honey. So starting off with honey to sell a food product food producers must understand the definition of the product. I get calls from those who want to make a specialized product and food inspectors will have them submit their products to be tested to ensure that it meets this definition. So on the end of honey, the FDA defines it as a thick, sweet syrupy substance that bees make as food from the nectar of plants and secretions of living parts of the plant and stored in a honeycomb. And so I've had other people call about different maple, different syrups made out of barks and all of those different things. And so I always tell them going in the CFR are seeing how the FDA actually defines that food item helps you decide whether you are selling the appropriate item or not. So looking at the name of honey products, the honey products contain only one product, one item or one ingredient which is honey. And so the common name for honey is honey and so that is the regulations listed there as far as the definition or the name to consider for honey. Another common name used for honey is clover honey. And then when we talk about labeling, according to the FDA, honey is a single ingredient product so your ingredient statement should just say honey. People often also call and ask about whether they can add different sweeteners or different flavors of it. And then at that point you are now changing the product. So a product consisted of honey and sweeteners cannot be labeled as honey. And then the state of Iowa where I work with people, we have a couple of people that put flavors in their honey and they have to do that under a food processor license and they have to get their honeys tested to make sure that they meet the proper definition or meet the safety standards as far as it being a shelf stable product. So looking at regulations of sales is always broken down to where people want to sell their products. And so based on where you want regulations, there are certain places that you can sell honey without a license and then it's considered a cottage food product. But depending on the state regulations, you may or may not need to use a cottage food license so depending on what state you're from. You probably want to look at those regulations or speak out, reach out to your local extension offices to see about the regulations is about that. Others may want to sell their products wholesale retail and so with that you might need a food processor license and have your facilities inspected but that's according to your state regulations. So when I did this presentation for the Great Plain beekeepers group, I polled my colleagues here in the North Central region about their regulations when it came to selling pure honey without a license. And so there are listed here and so in Illinois, honey and a comb or removed from the comb and an adulterated, unadulterated condition is exempt from inspections per the Illinois Food Drug and Cosmetics Act. This is a restriction on, there is a restriction on how much you can sell in Illinois so there's a limit of 500 gallons per year, and it must be extracted and bottled in the state inspected facility. In Iowa, you can sell pure honey direct to consumers from your home or the farmers market. There are stringent regulations as far as processing or adding flavors to it. In Kansas, you're allowed to sell direct to consumers without a license. In Minnesota, honey and maple syrup are considered products of the farm, and they can be sold at the farmers market without a license. However, if you add flavor, it is considered a cottage food and there are restrictions for reselling and doing special labels. For Missouri, all vendors who want to sell less than 50,000 per year and sell directly to consumers that does not include internet sales or farmers markets. There is no license needed to sell directly to consumers. And then Wisconsin, we have Dr. Engelman, if you are from Wisconsin, she probably can answer more direct questions. You do not need a license to extract your honey package it to sell your own honey from your bees, but there are stringent regulations on processing, such as canning, heating, straining the honey, and sales can occur directly to consumers at the farmers market or even on the internet. And so that is why the network that Julie and I co-lead the North Central region is a great resource to everyone out here in our region. Listed here are the people that responded to me in those emails and gave me those different regulations per state. So if you are from those states, that'll be your point of contact to contact about your regulations in your state about selling pure honey or flavor honey and whether that you can do that or not. I did put the regulations for North Dakota in the chat. So we have lots of people from North Dakota. You can click on that link and it'll take you right to our North Dakota rules. Alright, so next going into food safety consideration. So this was a fact sheet that I found from Clemson University to talk about some consumer food safety issues, considerations to consider as far as honey goes. So the primary food safety issue when it comes to honey is infant botulism. And so because infants have a compromised immune system and gastrointestinal tract, the spore's clostridium botulinum could provide an environment in their GI tracts that could produce those toxins over time and make the baby sick over time. And so that's why it is commonly recommended that babies under the age of one should not eat honey. Thinking about your storage of your honey and you want to make sure that you have it in an airtight container. So honey is hydroscopic so it means that it draws in moisture. And so additional moisture to the honey could make it favorable conditions for mold, yeast, and yeast growth and those in it. I recently had some mold grow in my organic maple syrup that I put in my cover and not the refrigerator. So I think I'm going to win the argument with my dad that syrup should go in the refrigerator now. So even with me being a food safety person, some of those same things that can happen to the regular consumer also happens to me. And then the final recommendation they have is honey may have crystals or granulated parts that show up as they get older, it's refrigerated or frozen. It's a natural process that does not harm the honey in any way to convert the crystals back to is liquid form. You want to place the honey in an open jar that's he say container and have it in one to two inches of hot, not boiling water, and then those crystals would disappear over time. You want to be careful to not overheat it because excessive heat could change the color of your honey and your flavor. So you want to maintain that yummy flavor that you love from your fresh honey, but you also want to get rid of those crystals. So going into food hazards and honey. So starting off with just the basic definition of food hazards, foods hazard foods can become hazard by contamination contamination is the unattended presence of harmful stuff substance or microorganisms and food. So food can become contaminated three different ways, chemical physical and biological hazards. Listed here are some general hazards that could be that it could occur with pasteurized honey. So chemical hazards could be phenols, antibiotics, chemical residues found in barrels that you may want to store it in metal lids or pale. So you want to make sure that you use appropriate food grade safe containers when you are storing in your honey. So physical hazards could be medical metal fragments, none metal particles such as wood stones and glass and even dirt. We'll talk a lot about dirt and how those physical hazards could lead to some form of contamination when we're talking about bottling. So this is a biological hazard that I've seen listed so far is that clustering and botulinum spores. And with that, as we said before when we talked about regulations, canning, if you do improper canning you could be introducing an environment that this bacteria could survive in and make sure that you're careful with how you are handling your honey. And so why are we talking about the spores of bot, of clustering and botulinum is because it produces toxins. So botulism is a rare but severe illness that is caused by a toxin that attacks your body nerve nerves and cause difficulty breathing, muscle paralysis and even death. The bacteria that makes botulinum botulinum toxins are found naturally in places is still rare for them to make people sick, but still could be a risk so we try to make sure that we warn people, especially if there is a possibility of risk. So the bacterias make spores that act as a protective coating those spores help the bacteria survive in their environment and they can survive either under extreme conditions so the spores do not cause people to become sick, even if they are eating but under certain circumstances and grow and make someone make the most lethal toxin known. So that is why we, you know, when we talk about canning and other considerations that you make sure that you are aware of some of these things so that you're not putting someone in an uncomfortable environment. So looking into best practices food safety management practices when it comes to bottling honey. Starting off with sanitation guide so when you are setting up your to bottling honey you want to first consider your sanitary design of your honey making facility. You want to first make sure that it is that you have a separate bottling space for when you're bottling honey from other activities that are going on so there's a lot of different farms that have honey and produce and meats and everything so having that separate space. And so in these next few slides we'll talk about that. And so starting with this exterior part of it. The first thing you want to consider is your exterior space. So when you're setting up, you want to make sure that your exterior space is clean. So you want to make sure that the grass is cut that there is no tall grass that there's no outside no no entry from the outside inside that could lead to contamination. So the ultimate thing is what you want to make sure if you're minimizing contamination by making sure that there is no outside activities going into your inside your effect activities. And so mentioning once again that there is you have your click grass. I'm selling the outside of your building to end to eliminate pests to come in your facilities. Next first sanitation guidelines is interior so the actual place that you are actually ball only you want to make sure that you want to minimize the the instance of any harborage of pests or any microorganisms so your space should be cleanable and it should be clean. Properly before you get started and make sure also all of your food contact surfaces are also properly clean. Last you want to make sure that you are protecting your product so you want to limit who can enter in your bottling space so for your employees and others you want to make sure that you have certain people that can enter the space and those who cannot. Thinking about the equipment you'll be using for bottling. We talked about having a cleanable space. You also want to include and make sure that the equipment that you use also meet the proper standard so when we talk about your equipment walls and ceilings you want to make sure that they're hard flat and smooth surfaces, you want to make sure that the surface of the equipment is resistant to any cleaning and sanitizing solution. You also want to make sure that you are using approved sanitizers for food grade work so making sure that you're reading those labels and understanding whether it could be using that space or not because you don't want any chemical hazards coming in as far as your bottling goes and then lastly you want to make sure that your equipment is installed correctly and sealed. Making sure all the pits and cracks that could harbor foodborne pathogens or any other contaminant, making sure that they're all properly sealed and cleanable and the space for your bottling should also be covered because you don't want an open space that any birds or any pests can come in and possibly contaminate your product. So another thing to consider is the hygienic practices of your handlers. So the first line of defense of reducing foodborne illness during production is making sure that your employees have safe handling practices. So listed here are a few considerations to think of. And so the first is, if someone is ill, especially with symptoms that are listed there, you want to make sure that they stay home. Number two is the big thing for the past couple of years is washing your hands. And if you look above my head with my image I've had to wash your hand sign for a while it used to be outside my door. Now that I have a decorative sign above, make sure we put that message out there to wash your hands. So it does not mean that you should just wash your hands at the start of bottling. You want to make sure that people are washing their hands when they use the bathroom after eating lunch. If they are handling money or any other things, making sure that they wash their hands then, or if they hands become soiled with any honey or debris so say if there's an overflow of honey, and it gets on their hands stopping cleaning your hands before you go and touch your product again. And then finally there should be no eating, drinking, or the use of tobacco while handling your products. So you want to have the design areas where your employees can go take breaks that are separate from the place that you are bottling. So making sure that your employees are following safe practices help also keep your space clear as far as any contaminants. So thinking about extraction day, when you get ready to extract your honey from the comb on extraction day there are things to consider while you get into yourself prepped. The first thing is coming up with your standard operating procedures of how you want to conflict clean before and after the day of extraction. So coming up with how you want the surfaces clean whether they need to swap sweep or mop your floors. So when we think about honey extraction that most people are extracting it from the comb itself. So you need the proper equipment so when you use a extractor for the honey comb you want to make sure that it is properly sealed, so that no dust dirt rodents or any other dust can get in there in your honey so you want to reduce those that ability of any contaminants coming into your final product. And then you also want to make sure you have a standard operating procedure for checking your surfaces so your ceiling walls floors are air free of any dust debris or cobwebs. And then one thing we also try to remind people to so with the honey you'll have that comb left over and so making sure that you're removing your trash and having a standard operating operating procedure for that as well. And so that is all that I have as far as honey and food safety. So I'll take your questions. All right, you have several questions and first of all thank you Shannon. In the chat. For those of you from North Dakota who are interested, I did post a link to the North Dakota regulations, they are through the North Dakota Department of Agriculture. And if you click on that you'll see that there is licensing required. So remember, you know, to Google North Dakota Department of Agriculture and honey, and then you will easily get that information. Cindy from Nebraska shared that Nebraska can sell pure non flavored honey under the cottage food registration and she also linked that information. And in Colorado, pure honey or infused honey can be sold to the end consumer as a cottage food product. And that's limited to $10,000 per product per year. And that information is under the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment website. So those are resources I see that people are from all over the Midwest so we're happy to have you here. Now I actually have a question for you Shannon. Two of them on the same sort of topic, and I'll give you both of them. Is it okay to microwave crystallized honey in the original container like a honey bear. And then someone else says I have heated my crystallized honey in the microwave on low power to melt the crystals is this safe. Um, so I'm going off of the fact sheet that I got the information from and so it gave very strict rules so saying that you're using that you should put it in a safe container and then put it in a heat safe container where unsure if that the nice bear honey container is a heat safe container. So you putting it over into a different container and making sure that you put it in hot not boiling water is what they suggested and I would just follow that. And then I think the same person added to the chat the honey is in an open glass jar when warmed on low power in the microwave and it doesn't change colors. Okay, so if that works for you, I would say it works for you but I would, for me, I will follow those instructions that was given in that document, I will stick to that because even when we went and visited a big food company, they, they have different microwaves for them to test their frozen foods that they give people strict instructions on how to eat their foods. And so they have different rooms with different microwaves so they can test it and so that to me, it was showing me that there are different variations and different microwaves and that's probably why they gave that recommendation about using the given those specific directions about how to heat reheat your honey. All right. Another person asked about the type of pests you were describing insects rodents. What, what do you mean by pests. So, in food safety and also this southern girl, all of it is pissed so rodents insects all of it with honey is going to attract. You know the insects. They will come if you know things are not properly sealed or you leave the door open too much so. So, all of it is considered past I wouldn't know what type of past you would have it your, your space, my students are still trying to work on me to stop calling mice rats but where I'm from their rats. But so just making sure whatever space you are you have a pest management process to make sure that you're doing it and appropriate clean space. Roger asks, is whipped honey considered processed. That I do not know. Do you do any form I guess if he could tell us how, how he makes his whip honey or anything like that. That would probably be a conversation that you also just take to your local inspectors and so that's the conversation I've been having with a lot of producers here now it's just with whatever product you want to do having a good conversation with your inspectors about whether they considered that processing or not, and taking the, the, the proper steps to, to get the license appropriate license of that. And Becky tells us that plastic honey bears melt so I'm guessing that's from experience so thank you Becky. Go ahead. So somebody put in the chat that with honey is half crystallized honey and half honey, we're up together. So in my state, that whole process of whipping and mixing the two. They will probably consider that as processing but that would the what I've learned is this is what I've been doing since the pandemic. They talked to the inspectors they told me to get out the conversation. So I'm out of the conversation you talk to them and when you need food safety training, come back to me. Jean asked about making a spreadable honey like a jelly. You had any experience with that. No, I have not, because we, we keep it very strict, especially with that beekeeping course we have here on campus is just pure honey that we work with. And I'll just add that I've worked with people that make honey butter. And that does require a visit and a license and all that sort of thing because that is a process food with more than one ingredient. I added to the chat, just because I was expecting this question I found the answer for you ahead of time. So if you want to can or make syrups using honey as a sweetener I have listed the link directly to the National Center for home food preservation which is a great source of home canning information. So generally you can use half could replace half of the sugar with honey, but it's always best when you're doing home food preservation that you find a tested recipe. And so you can go to that site and find more information. Okay, Mary says my husband put the hardened honey out in the sun on the deck last summer during one of those really hot days and it liquefied very well. Yeah, so some people do that just like my friend loves to put her soups out in the snow to chill it out she goes I'm falling for safety and I'm like okay. I just hope nobody come and touch it. We know any fast come and touch it. So, um, yep. Kathy asked about the honey butter available online. Okay, why don't you check the pride of Dakota website just pride of Dakota honey, and that would get you to the Department of Agriculture site and they have a lot of things available online. And I'm not sure if honey butter is among those that would have to be kept cold during transport so it might not be. But if you want to make your own honey butter I'll just go to all recipes.com you can make little batch and have it in your refrigerator and enjoy it. As I as I mentioned Kathy followed up just all recipes calm will certainly have a honey butter recipe, or just take butter, mix it to your sweetness satisfaction and use it at home. If you want to sell it as a whole other story though. Okay, Stacy adds that whipping honey makes it spreadable like jelly. Um, I just I've seen a lot of people get interested and, like I said in the past two years with the beekeeping course that we have here. It's almost like I do a quick food safety training before the students actually go through the process of extracting the honey so my teacher was like, you need to talk to them first and you know and I told them you know, you get the honey on your hand don't just lick it off because you make contaminated so I'm trying to do a quick crash crash crash course for the students and then with the, the one of three members for that class also said hey can you come and talk to the Great Plains people about it and so I did that as well just so that they are aware especially because I know a lot of people want to put flavors in their honeys and try to still sell it and I'm like wait. I've seen some people put pepper flakes and stuff like that and biggest thing with that is that you are a pure honey by itself is shelf stable and shouldn't support the growth of any micro organisms, especially if you keep your practices safe when you're bottling it. When you're introducing those flavors and other other ingredients you're now changing the ingredients the formulation of it, and you could be putting the product itself at risk. Another comment about honey bears and the microwave. I just make a comment in general we don't like people to put plastic containers that might not be microwave safe into the microwave oven just because we want to err on the side of extreme safety. So we generally don't recommend that when I have honey that crystallizes I just put some warm water in my sink and I put my container in there and I find that works well for me. Yeah. It's like we were saying with the physical and chemical hazards. You know, the bottle itself with the company is food great safe. We have a packaging guy here on campus and so that if you heat it or if you do any manipulation manipulation of the packaging there could be some things that are released from that packaging that then makes it unsafe because you're now altering the setup of that packaging. All right, well I hope you all enjoy honey and I will add that North Dakota is the leading producer of honey I just noticed that on our North Dakota agriculture site so I think we're in states in the Midwest where lots of honey is produced. And it certainly is a tasty sweetener to use in your various products from tea to cookies. And then someone said about they receive raw honey from a friend that has a hive is it safe to eat. If we go by the definition that the FDA has raw honey from the hive is safe for consumption so it's called honey. All right, Becky had one final comment I used to make hard suckers using honey, they were great and I felt I wasn't doing great damage to kids. Yeah, and I guess, and then it I think the recommendation that was from that fact she is up to the age of one. Right. Yeah, under the age of one so you really just want to make sure that you're following the appropriate protocols when it comes to certain foods. You have another one. How long is honey safe to store. Hmm. I've had minds over a year before. Um, so we probably can look at some different there. I know Nebraska has a whole food storage document that they develop and we can see of honey's on that list. Probably calling Cindy out, our colleague Cindy B. Honey is a very long shelf life actually really long. We'll learn a lot more about where to look up information on how long to safely store foods in my talk next week so I'll be providing you with some apps you could download and there's a USDA app on food storage. Here we go. Cindy has posted something for best quality up to 12 months after that it remains safe but the quality may not be as good. I just found their document and on there it said for honey molasses and syrup one year. So like, like a lot of things that loses quality over time. So it may not be a safety thing anymore. It may be a quality. It may be the way it tastes the color the crystallization and all of that. So I've permanently stopped buying honey because the honey group the beekeeping group gives me honey every year. So I don't have to buy me. I am going to post in the chat just because we still have lots of people online. This is the survey that really appreciate your input on. Again, honey is a specialty crop and this was made possible we've been doing these this is the seventh year. These are made possible with funding support so again appreciate your feedback on the survey. And as a little bonus you might even win a really cool prize and you can win more than one I will keep track of who is one. If you win twice, you get a different prize. And then I think Julie has posted the slides from my presentation they have links in them I've rechecked them again this week to make sure that they work so you can go into the different resources that I use to help develop this presentation. With that I thank you very much Shannon this was very informative and now I want some honey. Look, I might have let me see if I can ship you so when I see you next, I might have a lot. Sounds very good thank you all for joining us and please continue to join us next week will be our midpoint, the fifth webinar, and I'll be your speaker and we'll be talking a lot about food storage and composting and reducing food waste.