The nation beekeepers' lobby wants to see a "robust management system" in the promotion and marketing of medicinal manuka honey.
"The National Beekeeping Association (NBA) is encouraging the manuka honey industry to reaffirm its direction for marketing manuka honey," the association's executive officer, Jim Edwards of Otaki, says.
It wants consumers confidence and "quality assurance" in the manuka product range.
Ratings of the unique manuka factor (UMF) underpin domestic and export manuka honey markets worth more than $100 million a year, but have been caught up in a series of disputes.
Edwards declined to comment in detail on a split by Professor Peter Molan from dealings with the Active Manuka Honey Association (AMHA) which runs the ratings and testing test system he researched for biologically-active manuka honey.
An industry rival of the AMHA, Manuka Health New Zealand chief executive Kerry Paul says the end of a 15-year relationship between Molan and the AMHA is "industry shaking".
Molan was involved in the establishment of the AMHA grouping and did the research underpinning its "unique manuka factor" (UMF) rating system.
He said in a personal email to honey companies last week that he had "decided personally to no longer have anything to do with AMHA or UMF".
"I hold the executive of AMHA responsible for my reaching this personal decision," he said.
Executives of AMHA declined to comment until the release of a judge's decision from a court hearing in which Molan gave evidence.
In the hearing, the High Court at Hamilton heard that honey business Watson and Son had been named New Zealand's fastest growing company with revenue growth of 784 percent between 2006 and 2008, but withdrawal of its licence to use the UMF ratings would place its future in jeopardy.
Molan said in an affidavit that UMF tests on the same honey could return results varying by 2 points plus or minus on a 20-point test. He also said that test refinements he had recommended had not been introduced by AMHA.
A lawyer for Watson and Son, Daniel Hughes sought an interim injunction to prevent the AMHA withdrawing the company's licence to use the UMF ratings. The judge in the case reserved his decision.
Paul says the perceived uncertainty over UMF ratings in different environmental conditions could provide an opportunity for use of his company's system using measurement of a compound, methylglyoxal, found in manuka honeys.
But Molan, the head of Waikato University's honey research Unit, has previously said that it would mislead consumers to represent the antibacterial activity of manuka honey by listing the methylglyoxal level.
"Although it is the component responsible for the activity, complex interactions with other components of the honey cause the actual antibacterial activity that results from it in the honey to vary," he said.
The UMF system measured the actual antibacterial activity of each batch of honey, tested against the species of bacteria that is the most common cause of wound infections, Staphylococcus aureus.NZ
