Nepal’s mad honey needs a safety standard before it needs new markets

Locals use makeshift ladders to collect honey from the coves. Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale On October 5, food inspectors in the Czech Republic posted an alert on the European Union’s food-safety network about a 50-gram tub of honey from Nepal. It had reached Czech shops through the Netherlands. Tested in the lab, it held 64 milligrams of grayanotoxin per kilogram. The European Food Safety Authority has calculated that 0.05 milligrams per kilogram is a level that protects everyone at normal eating amounts.

That tub was more than a thousand times above it. The sale was banned and the risk was classed as “serious”. It was not the first. In March 2025, Austria had two online listings of Nepali honey taken down after tests found 11.59 and 2.95 milligrams per kilogram. Each alert is small.

Together they are a pattern, and the pattern points at us. Why this honey is different Pink Rhododendrons seen on the trail. Grayanotoxin comes from rhododendron nectar.