Australia's biggest supermarkets are standing by Australian honey producers in the wake of international researchers claiming their produce are the most contaminated in the world.
Woolworths and Metcash, which owns the IGA brand, haven't altered honey supply agreements, saying all the food, including honey, they stock complies with Food Standards Australia New Zealand guidelines. 
The food regulator and several Australian academics have backed the quality of Australian honey, dismissing research published in the Food Additives and Contaminants scientific journal. All but five Australian honeys tested had more contaminants than the European Food Safety Authority would consider safe or tolerable, according to the report.
A Food Standards Australia New Zealand spokeswoman said some types of honey contain "high levels of naturally occurring plant toxins known as pyrrolizidine alkaloids", but it was no cause for alarm and the levels should not cause sickness.
"Although acute poisoning incidents have occurred in other countries from contamination of PA plants in wheat, salad and other crops there have been no reports of acute poisoning from honey," she said, "and no other reports of PA poisoning in Australia and New Zealand."
The toxins may get into honey when bees forage on the flowers of weeds such as Paterson's curse. The food standards spokeswoman said the industry had clamped down on the spread of the weeds.
If some bees had foraged in Paterson's curse flowers, she said, processors blended their honeys to reduce the pyrrolizidine alkaloid content to a safe level.
A Woolworths spokesman said they adhered to all the health guidelines when it came to the sale of honey. A Metcash spokesman said it did the same. Coles declined to comment.
Dr Shona Blair, of the University of Technology Sydney, who is a microbiologist and has studied the anti-microbial and healing properties of honey, said there was no evidence that consuming Australian honeys harmed people's health.
" ... Recent scientific studies have demonstrated likely health benefits associated with Australian honey," she wrote online science news website Scimex.
Professor Andrew Bartholomaeus, of the University of Canberra and University of Queensland, said people would be "wise" to avoid honey produced solely from Patterson's curse.
He said high levels of PA exposure has been linked to liver and other cancers in humans.