Improvements to the UMF assay

Abstract

With the increasing price of manuka honey there are increasing calls for a more precise measurement of UMF activity. Two years ago i gave to the AMHA executive a written report on some work they had commissioned me to do investigating variation in the results in the essay. In this report I made some recommendations for improvements, but these were never adopted. Instead their approach has been to seek an alternative method, firstly assay by MIC, and then assay MGO content, despite my explaining why these methods would not be more accurate.