Raw Honey at Least as Safe as Pasteurized Honey

Wendell Estate Honey contests the common misconception that pasteurized honey is safer than raw honey

/EIN News/ -- MACNUTT, Saskatchewan, April 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- “Pasteurized” has become synonymous with “food safety”. However, pasteurization of honey has never been intended to increase food safety. Pasteurized honey is no safer to consume than raw honey, and may even be slightly less safe.

Wendell Estate brand of premium raw honey [https://wendellestate.ca/] has lost sales and customers in the restaurant and food service industries due to the perception that eating raw honey is accompanied by health risks. Founder of Wendell Estate Honey, Tim Wendell, says that unfounded fears around raw honey present a significant challenge to the business. “Some people hear the word ‘raw’ and assume that it connotates health risks absent in pasteurized honey. Our raw honey has been rejected by restaurants and food service companies due to this false perception that eating raw honey carries health risks. It’s a lose-lose scenario as raw honey is at least as safe as the highly processed honey dominating supermarket shelves, but with more diverse, complex flavors and increased health benefits.”

Online sources of health and medical information often assert that pasteurization of honey is done for food safety reasons, stating that pasteurized honey is the safer choice, especially for high-risk individuals. Wendell Estate Honey undertook a review of the science and evidence regarding the safety of raw honey and presents the results here.

Why is Honey Pasteurized?
Pasteurization of foods like dairy products is done to kill pathogenic bacteria, and does significantly increase food safety. Honey is different in that pathogenic bacteria cannot survive in honey. With natural honey already bacteria-free, pasteurization does not decrease the risk of bacterial infection, which is essentially non-existent for natural raw honey (the notable exception for infants is discussed below). Honey is pasteurized to kill naturally occurring yeasts, which are harmless if eaten, but can cause raw honey to ferment under the right conditions. By killing the yeasts, pasteurization prevents fermentation and extends shelf life. Note while many find the sour, yeast-y taste of fermented honey unpleasant, fermented honey poses no health risk if eaten. Other fermented food and drink, like kimchi and kombucha are often consumed for their health benefits.

The Downsides of Pasteurization

Pasteurizing honey is done for economic reasons: It lowers packaging costs and extends shelf life. Natural raw honey is gaining popularity in part due to its perceived and scientifically backed health benefits. It’s thought that natural organic substances like bee enzymes, flavonoids and polyphenols each play a role in various health benefits conferred by raw honey. Many of these organic molecules are denatured by heating, so while pasteurized honey has a longer shelf life, it’s not quite as good for you as raw honey. Processing and pasteurizing raw honey also alters (honey aficionados say “diminishes”) its complex flavor profile. Finally, pasteurization of honey is usually accompanied by ultrafiltration, which removes the natural bee pollen along with other solid particles. Without bee pollen present, determining the geographic and floral origin as well as the purity of the honey becomes difficult.

What About Infant Botulism and Raw Honey?

The fact that eating honey among infants less than 12 months of age is the only preventable risk factor for developing infant botulism may be one reason why raw honey is perceived as generally less safe than pasteurized honey. This deserves unpacking.

While bacteria cannot grow in raw honey, one species of bacteria, Clostridium botulinum can avoid being completely eradicated by the potent anti-bacterial properties of raw honey by going into a hardy, dormant spore state. (Note: manuka honey’s successful marketing has overshadowed the awareness that any natural raw honey has similar anti-bacterial properties). C. botulinum spores are metabolically inactive (analogous to the seed of a plant), waiting for hostile conditions to change so they can germinate into their active bacterial state. Importantly, inactive spores produce none of the botulin toxin that causes food-borne botulism in some spoiled foods. With no botulinum toxin present, you can’t get food-borne botulism from raw honey.

C. Botulinum Spores are Everywhere

C. botulinum and its spores are ubiquitous in nature, commonly present in soil and dust, and, rarely, in honey. C. botulinum contamination (via soil particles or dust) has historically been a cause of food-borne botulism with improperly canned foods including some vegetables, meat, and fruit. These foods lack raw honey’s natural anti-bacterial properties, so if the bacteria survive the canning process, they grow and multiply, contaminating the food with botulin toxin. Eating any food spoiled by C. botulinum contamination and the accompanying neurotoxin results and serious, acute, possibly life-threatening, food-borne botulism.

By contrast, when C. botulinum bacteria contaminate raw honey, it can only exist as spores. When a case of infant botulism occurs, especially when the infant has a history of eating honey, honey is often the assumed culprit. However, honey causes only a small minority of cases of infant botulism. A 1989 study in the American Journal of Diseases of Children [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/514674] found that of the 68 cases of infant botulism identified, only 7 (11%) had consumed honey. Even when the infant had eaten honey, that doesn’t mean that honey was the cause: any food, or other item that entered the infant’s mouth, contaminated by dust or soil containing the pathogenic spores could have been the cause. The California Department of Public Health [https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/FAQs_English_Updated_March2022_ADA.pdf] noted that as of 2022, only 35 cases of infant botulism globally have ever been conclusively proven (by genetic strain testing) to be due to honey consumption. Since honey consumption is the only identified preventable cause of this rare, but serious disease, most pediatric organizations recommend avoiding feeding honey to infants less than 1 year of age.

Why Don’t C. Botulinum Spores Cause Illness in Older Individuals?

Infants are susceptible to infant botulism because prior to about 6 months their intestines have not yet been fully colonized by the healthy bacteria that play important roles in food digestion and gut health. These “normal flora” bacteria that coat the intestines of people older than six to nine months prevent C. botulinum spores from adhering to the intestinal environment where they can transform back into their active, toxin-producing, disease-causing form. When an individual older than one year ingests C. botulinum spores, the spores simply pass through the intestine unnoticed.

Pasteurization of Honey Does Nothing to C. Botulinum Spores

That C. botulinum spores can survive in raw honey attests to their remarkable hardiness: they are quite difficult to eradicate. The temperatures used in honey pasteurization of 63°C (146°F) to 75°C (167°F), have no effect on C botulinum spores, which need to be heated in a pressure cooker to much higher temperatures of 240-250°F (116-121°C) to be destroyed. In terms of infant botulism, pasteurized honey is no safer than raw honey.

Raw Honey & Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women.

Raw foods are often avoided in pregnancy to reduce the chances of the expectant mom contracting a bacterial infection that could have adverse effects on the fetus, resulting in premature birth or stillbirth in the worst cases. The fact that honey is a risk factor for infant botulism likely increases the perception that eating raw honey poses a risk to either pregnant or breastfeeding women. According to the world-renowned Mayo clinic, because active bacteria cannot survive in raw honey there is no risk of contracting any bacterial infection from eating raw honey [https://connect.mayoclinic.org/blog/transplant/newsfeed-post/unpasteurized-foods-and-raw-honey/]. While C. botulinum spores may be present in honey, not only would they pass harmlessly through the mother’s digestive tract, they are much too large to be absorbed into the bloodstream and then passed either to the fetus or the breast-feeding baby. If a pregnant or breastfeeding mom can safely eat pasteurized honey, she can safely eat raw honey.

How Pasteurized Honey May be Less Safe than Raw Honey

One potential risk of processed honey is that the pasteurization of most honeys greatly diminishes natural honey’s antibacterial properties. If an open jar of raw honey sitting on a table is accidentally contaminated with bacteria, say by somebody “double-dipping” with a spoon after putting it in their mouth, these bacteria won’t survive in the raw honey, and the raw honey remains safe to eat. Bacteria introduced into pasteurized honey are more likely to survive and there is a remote possibility infection could result from eating bacterial contaminated processed honey.

Honey is the 3^rd most commonly adulterated food in the world. Unscrupulous producers or packagers can add cheaper syrups of processed sugar to honey to boost profits. Pasteurized, ultrafiltered honey lacks bee pollen which can be used to assess the origin and purity of the honey. It is more difficult to identify adulteration of processed honeys than raw honeys. While raw honeys can be adulterated in the same manner as processed honeys, it is more easily detected and appears to happen less frequently. Lower end processed honeys are more easily adulterated with refined sugars, lowering the production costs and allowing a lower price on the shelf. A growing body of research is delineating raw honey’s positive effects on health [https://wendellestate.ca/raw-honey-is-healthy/] while refined sugars are increasingly known for their myriad ill effects on health, including obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease to name but a few (many of the same conditions eating honey helps to avoid). Highly processed, pasteurized honey not only confers decreased health benefits, but seems to be more likely to replace those health benefits in part with the health harms of processed sugars. Unwittingly eating some refined sugar in your “honey” won’t lead to immediate illness or toxic effects, but over time and at a population level, it could result in decreased overall health and increased incidence of medical conditions.

[BOILERPLATE PARAGRAPH] Wendell Estate Honey [https://wendellestate.ca/] was founded in 2011 to offer premium raw honey to consumers that lack access to a local honey producer. The Wendell family has been beekeeping since the 1930s and honey production (sold in bulk to other brands) remains the main business. Every year, the finest honey their bees produce is directed from the extraction line to the retail canning line and packaged fresh, on the farm during harvest. Wendell’s award-winning creamed raw honey has been changing how people think of honey for over 15 years. In 2024, The Canadian Honey Council presented Wendell Estate founding owner, Tim Wendell, with a national award recognizing a lifetime of dedication to improving sustainable beekeeping in Canada.

CONTACT Jeremy Wendell, Business Development COMPANY Wendell Estate Honey PHONE +1 (204) 564-2315 EMAIL info@wendellestate.ca  WEB wendellestate.ca