About

True Source Honey, LLC was founded in 2010 by companies within the honey industry that share a mutual desire to stop the practice of honey trade law circumvention and address the problems that this created in the industry ranging from two-tiered markets, inadequate quality assurance practices and risk to the authentic and wholesome image of honey. Today, True Source Honey has more than 600 participating companies, including beekeepers and honey importers, exporters and packers.

An estimated 40% of honey sold in the United States and Canada is True Source Certified^®, which requires honey to be fully traceable, from hive to table, tested to confirm authenticity and audited by a third party. 

The True Source Certified Program

The True Source Certified^® program aims to protect the quality and reputation of honey as a natural, wholesome food and further sustain the U.S. honey sector. It’s a voluntary system for participants in an international supply chain who wish to demonstrate through an independent third-party audit that their sourcing practices for honey are in full compliance with U.S. and international trade laws and meet the requirements of the True Source Certified^® Standards.

There are two critical areas of focus in the supply chain: the exporter and the packer. In order to provide traceability, participants must adhere to all elements of the standards. These include proper documentation, use of the True Source Certified system of identification, and in some countries, the use of third-party auditors to sample and seal loads in the country of origin prior to shipment.

The authenticity testing program must be administrated by the North American packer upon receipt of the honey, with all testing completed by an accredited laboratory. The results must be available to a third-party auditor for each True Source Certified load in a North America packer audit. In addition, these same tests will be conducted on random samples collected during a packer audit.

Supporting Bees and Beekeepers

True Source Honey members actively support U.S. beekeepers, including supporting research to help beekeepers maintain the health and high quality of U.S. honey production and to fight colony collapse disorder. True Source Honey member companies are supporters of a strong and healthy U.S. beekeeping industry and are members of the American Beekeeping Federation and the American Honey Producers Association.