Record Keeping for Honey Extractors & Packers on National Programme 1
Extract or pack honey and you're the classic National Programme 1 business — no written Food Control Plan, one scheduled verification, and a short list of records that genuinely matter: tutin status, where every batch came from, who's trained, and a practised mock recall. KitchenSorted keeps those records dated, attributed and findable next season — free.
Free forever for daily records. No credit card. No hardware.
Is extracting or packing honey National Programme 1?
Yes — “Extract or pack honey” is first on the cover list of MPI's National Programme 1 guidance (December 2025, version 2), the lowest-risk tier under the Food Act 2014. On NP1 you don't write a Food Control Plan: you register, meet food safety standards, keep records and get verified. The paperwork is lighter than an FCP — it is not zero. Here's how all three National Programme levels work.
The edges are where it gets murky, and we won't pretend to be the authority on them. If you do more than extract or pack — blending honey with other ingredients, making other bee-product foods, or selling in ways beyond straightforward packing — different rules may apply, and exporting changes the picture entirely (more on that below). Before you register, confirm your classification with MPI's official My Food Rules tool.
How often is a honey NP1 business verified?
Once, at the start. NP1 businesses get an initial verification only — after that, a verifier must not carry out further verifications unless something goes wrong and regulation 102 (unscheduled verification) applies. That's regulations 93–94 of the Food Regulations 2015 — the reg 94 frequency table literally includes a “no verification” step for NP1 operators in good standing.
One visit doesn't mean zero records, though. The record-keeping duties run the whole time you operate, the initial visit is precisely where a verifier reviews them, and an unscheduled visit — triggered when something goes wrong — is the worst possible moment to be reconstructing paperwork. A single verification also means a single chance at a smooth one: records that are dated, complete and easy to hand over make that first visit shorter and calmer.
Tutin status: the check at every honey verification
MPI's NP1 guidance (December 2025, version 2) lists the sector-specific topic a verifier checks at every honey business verification: tutin status. Tutin is a plant toxin that can end up in honey via passion vine hoppers feeding on tutu plants, and the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code caps it at 0.7 mg/kg in both honey and honeycomb — all honey for sale or export must comply (MPI: Managing tutin contamination in honey).
MPI's tutin page sets out five ways to show tutin is managed: laboratory testing; placing supers onto hives after 1 July and harvesting from them by 31 December the same year; siting hives where the foraging radius has no significant tutu; siting hives in the bottom two-thirds of the South Island (below 42 degrees south); or demonstrating low risk through targeted testing over several years. Crucially for extractors and packers: beekeepers must keep a record of how their honey complies and provide that information to anyone extracting and packing their honey.
That makes your receiving record the natural home for tutin evidence. In KitchenSorted, the tutin information that arrives with each delivery is logged against the batch it belongs to — dated, attributed, and still findable when your verifier asks “show me your tutin status” months or years later.
What records does a honey NP1 business need to keep?
MPI's NP1 guidance lists six records you keep as a matter of course, plus a second set you record whenever something goes wrong. For a honey operation they look like this:
Required records
- Water test results — if your extraction or packing site is on a self-supply (tank or bore)
- Competency and training — who's been shown what, and when
- Sourcing, receiving and tracing — which beekeeper, which site, which drums and batches, with the tutin information that must come with them
- Allergens and knowing what's in your food
- Transporting food — temperature checks where applicable
- Simulated (mock) recall — practising how you'd trace and pull a batch
Record when something goes wrong
- Checking the programme is working well
- Pests, maintenance, storage and display
- Separating safe and unsafe food; foreign matter
- Packing and labelling; recalling food
Verifiers also check core topics at the verification — competency and training, cleaning, personal hygiene and health, sourcing and tracing, process controls — plus tutin status as the honey sector-specific check.
Every record must be kept for at least 4 years after it's created (regulation 81, Food Regulations 2015) — here's how the 4-year rule works. That duty is yours however you keep records; paper satisfies it. In KitchenSorted, 4 years of history, verification packs and reminders live in the paid plan — your free-plan records are never deleted and unlock when you upgrade.
Seasonal harvests are where paper record keeping falls over
Let's be fair to paper: it's legal, MPI doesn't prescribe a format, and a notebook that's legible, accurate, dated and attributed meets the rules. The honey problem is the off-season. The extraction run ends, the ring binder goes in a drawer, and by the time the next harvest lands you're reinventing the format, hunting for last year's tutin evidence, and trying to remember which beekeeper supplied which drums fourteen months ago.
An app doesn't forget between seasons. KitchenSorted keeps the same record formats waiting when the season starts, your supplier and site details from last year already in place, and the whole history in one searchable spot rather than three notebooks and a shoebox. Daily records are free, and stay free — and when a verifier does visit, the verification pack assembles everything into one dated PDF instead of a morning of photocopying.
Exporting honey? A National Programme isn't enough on its own
Straight answer, because you deserve one before you build a compliance setup around the wrong regime: if you export bee products to countries that require official assurance, MPI says you must operate under a registered risk management programme (RMP) — that applies to operators who store bee products intended for export, and to secondary processors who extract, process, pack or store bee products (MPI: Honey and bee product RMPs). RMPs sit under the Animal Products Act 1999, a different regime from the Food Act's National Programmes, with its own registration and its own verifiers.
KitchenSorted's National Programme record keeping does not replace an RMP, and we won't pretend otherwise. The export pathway also comes with its own paperwork — for example, MPI publishes a harvest declaration form for bee products intended for export, used for every delivery of bee products to an extraction or processing premises for export purposes. If export is on your horizon, start with MPI's exporting honey and bee products pages before you register anything.
Honey record-keeping FAQs
Sources & review
- MPI: National Programme 1 guidance, December 2025 v2 (PDF)
- MPI: National Programmes overview
- MPI: Managing tutin contamination in honey
- MPI: Honey and bee product RMPs
- MPI: Honey and bee product forms, templates, and requirements
- Food Regulations 2015 (regs 81–82, 93–94, 102)
Reviewed on 3 August 2026 by the KitchenSorted team. Regulatory pages are re-reviewed quarterly, and immediately when MPI announces template or policy changes. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
This page is general information, not legal or food-safety advice. Always confirm requirements with MPI, your registration authority, or your verifier.
Honey Records That Survive the Off-Season
Tutin evidence, traceability, training and mock recalls in one place — start free before the next harvest.