Honey in a food made for infants has to be announced with one particular word, sterilised. The same rules say nothing at all about a pack made for a one-year-old.
Two clauses, doing different jobs
Standard 2.9.2 of the Food Standards Code is the one for food for infants. Paragraph 2.9.2-3(1)(b) says that food must not contain honey or native bee honey “unless the food has been treated to inactivate Clostridium botulinum spores”. That one is about composition: what’s in the food.
Paragraph 2.9.2-7(3)(e) is about the label. If honey or native bee honey has been used as an ingredient, the required information includes “the word ‘sterilised’ in association with the word ‘honey’”. On a pack of food for infants that reads sterilised honey in the ingredient list, you’re looking at both clauses at once: the maker says the treatment happened, and the Code made them write it down.
Native bee honey is the newer part. It was added to both paragraphs by Amendment No. 229, which commenced on 22 July 2024, according to the amendment history at the foot of the same compilation. Before that date the paragraph named honey alone.
A third word sits nearby and is easy to run together with the first. Sweetened is required under 2.9.2-7(3)(d) when a food has more than 4 g per 100 g of monosaccharide and disaccharide from added sugars, honey or native bee honey. That rule has its own post: what the age statement and sweetened labelling mean.
Why the Code cares about honey
FSANZ explains it on its Clostridium botulinum page, last updated 26 November 2025. Infant botulism is caused by eating the bacteria’s spores, and generally only infants under 12 months old get it. FSANZ calls botulism extremely rare in Australia, lists honey among the foods at higher risk of contamination, and gives its advice in nine words: “Avoid giving honey to infants under 12 months old”.
The NHMRC Infant Feeding Guidelines (2012, still listed as current) say the same in section 9.4.2. Honey “can contain the spores of Clostridium botulinum, and should not be given to infants aged under 12 months”, and the advice to parents is “to prevent botulism, do not feed honey to infants aged under 12 months.”
The guidance is advice to families. The Code is a rule for makers. The Code lets honey into infant food once it has been treated to inactivate the spores, and requires the word on the pack whenever it’s used.
What the word sterilised can and can’t tell you
It’s the maker’s statement. In food for infants, the Code requires the word wherever honey is an ingredient, and requires the treatment to have happened. Peeka can’t check the treatment on any pack, and an ingredient list won’t let you check it.
It also doesn’t tell you how, and Peeka won’t guess. Paragraph 2.9.2-3(1)(b) sets the outcome, inactivating the spores, and says nothing in that paragraph about the method.
Where the rule stops
Both clauses reach only food for infants. The composition clause opens on those words, and the labelling clause gets the same reach through Standard 1.2.1, which sends the labels of food for infants to Standard 2.9.2. Standard 1.1.2 defines it as a food intended or represented for use as a source of nourishment for infants, leaving out infant formula products, formulated meal replacements, formulated supplementary foods and unprocessed fruit and vegetables. An infant, in the same Standard, is a person under 12 months.
Put the two definitions together and the rule has an edge. A pack that states a minimum age of 12 months or over is, on its face, a food for someone who isn’t an infant. Peeka’s reading is that neither clause then reaches it: the Code does not require its honey to be treated, and does not require the word sterilised on it. No source says that sentence in those words. It’s what the definitions produce when you set them next to the clauses.
So the number to look for on a pack is the stated age, and it’s worth reading that number before reading the ingredient list. A pack stating 6 months and over with honey in it has to carry the word. A pack for 12 months and over carries no such obligation, which means the absence of sterilised on it tells you nothing about the honey, and the presence of honey in its list tells you nothing about whether it was treated.
Two cautions on that reading. First, the definition turns on what a food is “intended or represented” for, and a printed age is the best evidence of it you can hold, though not the only way a food can be represented. Second, nothing here says any particular product contains untreated honey. Peeka names no product here, because the point is where the rule applies.
The rule is firm; the edge is a reading
The three things above are not equally solid.
The Code’s text is the firmest. Two clauses, quoted, in force, and checkable on the legislation site in a minute. The amendment dates come from the compilation’s own history.
The national feeding guidance is firm in a different way. FSANZ and the NHMRC both say honey should not be given under 12 months, and both are published, current and reachable. That is advice, and it isn’t law.
Where the rule stops is the softest of the three. It’s Peeka’s reading of two definitions, and a different reader could draw the edge somewhere slightly different, especially for a pack whose age statement and its marketing point different ways. If a pack puts you in that spot, a GP or child health nurse can talk it through.
The label and the 12-month advice are separate things
Does sterilised honey settle the question? The word means the maker says the honey was treated. The FSANZ and NHMRC advice about under-12-months is a separate document with its own wording, quoted above, and how the two sit together for your child is a conversation for your GP or child health nurse.
The Code’s definition of an infant and the guidance’s age line land in the same place, 12 months, and a pack’s wording moves neither.
General information, not medical advice. Chat with your GP or child health nurse.