May 20 is World Bee Day. In 2017 the UN General Assembly, acting on a proposal from Slovenia (a country of enthusiastic beekeepers) designated this day as an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development.
One of ISO's technical subcommittees, ISO/TC 34 SC 19, Bee Products, works to support the apiculture segment of the industry with standards for the processing and circulation of bee products. This includes product standards, process standards, beekeeping practices, quality standards, testing method standards and storage and transportation standards. They are currently working on a standard for honey. This standard will provide rules to ensure that what is labeled as “honey” is real and not made with added sugar, or heated too much, ultrafiltered to remove all the pollen and mask its origin, and so forth.
ISO/TC 347 cares about this because we are in the business of enabling smart farming, which includes smart apiculture. Beekeeping and bee products processing has many points where data are produced, consumed, exchanged, transformed, and used to drive decisions. Helping advance smart apiculture was in fact one of the 49 recommendations from the Strategic Advisory Group on Smart Farming that preceded and led to the creation of TC 347. We're looking forward to collaborating with TC 34 SC 19!
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