Is bee-free honey in our future?

Photo from Fooditive

Honey starts with bees…or does it? Dutch-based ingredients supplier Fooditive (Rotterdam, Netherlands) announced that in the new year, it will begin trials to mass-produce 100%-bee-free honey.

States the company’s press release: “Leveraging the same patented biotech process already used to create Fooditive’s revolutionary vegan casein, which was launched last year, honey DNA is copied into a proprietary strain of yeast. When fed with nutrients and precision-fermented to replicate the metabolic processes that occur in the honeybee stomach, this yields a product with the same characteristics and functionality of bee-produced honey—from taste, color, and viscosity to its health benefits.”

It adds: “The production trials will recreate the lab-proven concept in 1,000-liter fermenters, with samples to be made available for potential customers to try and test out in their own applications.”

Fooditive says its hope is that bio-identical honey will eliminate the need to “intensively farm” honeybees and ease concerns about animal welfare. In the press release, company founder and CEO Moayad Abushokhedim added, “We believe our process will be the stepping stone for a revolutionary advancement in the food and biotechnology industries, enabling any animal product to be mimicked and even improved by bioengineering plant-based ingredients.”