About
The Good Food Awards rely on the expertise of the honey community to create the tasting, determine judges and set standards for the category. Read on to learn who has been integral to building the category, as well as what the honey standard are and who will be judging this year.
Committee
Co-ChairsMark Carlson
Senior R&D and QA Chemist at Micro-Tracers, Inc.
Mark served in the Peace Corps in El Salvador from 2005 to 2007 and started keeping bees as part of his agriculture/forestry extension work. He has over 5 years’ experience teaching beekeeping in San Francisco and graduated with the inaugural class of California Master Beekeepers. Since the first year of the GFA Honey Category in 2016, he has contributed as a committee chair, committee member or volunteer. He keeps Italian honey bees in the Bayview – his bees love the local blackberry flowers and he loves their amber honey.
Leslie Santarina
Programs, Events & Operations at C200 and Broadway Angels
Leslie is an avid honey collector, urban grower, sustainable food enthusiast, and a dedicated GFA volunteer, serving as a Chocolate Judge, a Grains Judge, and GFA photographer in previous years. She was also a published author, supporting and featuring many of San Francisco’s independent restaurants, small businesses, and local experiences. Her experience as a professional photographer and capturing beautiful dishes is what inspired her to go beyond the plate to better understand where good food comes from. She is currently studying entrepreneurship, food systems, and the future of food. She is proud to work with the Good Food Foundation in the shared goal to seek out and recognize the nation’s most delicious and responsible food products.
Sarah Red-Laird, Executive Director, Bee Girl Organization
Kim Flottom, Beekeeping Today Podcast, Growing Planet Media
2023 Judges
Coming Soon...Nicole Mason
Director of Community Engagement, Veritable Vegetable
Ann Colonna
Sensory & Consumer Science Program Director, Food Innovation Center, Oregon State University
Laura Ginsburg
Section Chief - Marketing & Business Development, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets
Jennifer Antos
Executive Director, Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Markets
Loren Lindler
Marketing Specialist, South Carolina Department of Agriculture
Mea McNeil
Journalist, The American Bee Journal
Yolanda Burrell
Farmer and Educator, Pollinate Farm & Garden
Kim Flottum
Podcaster, Growing Planet Media
Amina Harris
Director, Honey and Pollination Center, UC Davis
Denise Breyley
Principal Local Forager, Whole Foods Market
Elisabeth Eschelbeck
Master Beekeeper, Self-employed
Gerhard Eschelbeck
Master Beekeeper, Self-employed
Standards
In order to be eligible for a Good Food Award, honey entries must meet the following standards:
- Produced in the USA or US territories.
- Be the bona fide product of the entrant’s own bees.
- Harvested between August 2021 and August 2022.
- Extracted with minimal heat (100°) and, after extraction, not exposed to heat greater than 120°.
- Strained and/or filtered to leave in pollen.
- If made with inclusions (such as fruit and herbs):
- If grown domestically, they are locally sourced wherever possible; traceable; and grown without the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides, fungicides or fertilizers.
- If not grown domestically on a commercial scale, they are farm-direct, certified organic or Fair Trade certified.
- Made by a crafter that is an upstanding member of the good food community, committed to equity and inclusion in all levels of their business,* as exemplified through integrating these practices:
- Offering a diversity, equity, and inclusion training to staff members and/or leadership annually.
- Thoughtfully acknowledging the heritage of culturally-specific food on websites, packaging and/or marketing materials.
- For the small percentage of Good Food community that operates on a significantly larger scale, meeting additional criteria related to board diversity, maternity leave and employment practices.*
Additionally, beekeepers who own and/or manage the bees locally and extract the honey must:
- Practice good animal husbandry, including:
- Do not locate hives within a five-mile radius of crops that receive heavy usage of agrochemicals.**
- Do not regularly relocate any hives major distances for commercial pollination services.***
- Manage hives using minimal chemical interventions (miticides, antibiotics, etc.), in response to need and never prophylactically, following prescribed application guidelines.
- Feed balanced nutrition when needed, that is non-GMO and free of high fructose corn syrup and artificial ingredients, including colors, flavors and preservatives.
- Practice social responsibility, including:
- Engage their community in education.
- If staff is employed in tending the hives and harvesting the honey, they are treated respectfully and given fair compensation.
*Check if you are in the 2% of companies meeting the Good Food Foundation definition of large scale, and review the addition criteria on the Rules & Regulations page.
**The Good Food Foundation acknowledges that the 5-mile range will exclude entry of honeys harvested in areas of agricultural acreage in the Midwestern heartland, California’s Central Valley and other heavily farmed sections of the country This criterion reflects our concerns for the long-term health of bees in monoculture farming and the higher presence of trace chemicals in honeys from areas of heavy agrochemical application.
***Hives may be moved short distances for appropriate forage.
The Good Food Foundation has deep respect for the work of all beekeepers who are practicing responsible husbandry and caring for the health of pollinators. We therefore invite beekeepers in these conventionally-farmed regions, who are creating healthy, abundant, diverse, agrochemical-free pollinator habitat, to enter. They will be asked to provide compelling documentation of their work to balance the surrounding environs by providing plentiful local forage for their hives.
Subcategories
Additionally, honey entries must fit within one of the following subcategories:
- Liquid & Naturally Crystallized
- Creamed
- Comb
- Infused