Every time we publish a new round of test results — bread, honey, Weet-Bix, oats, wine — one question comes up more than any other:
Who’s actually doing the testing, and can they be trusted?
It’s a fair question. So here’s the straight answer.
We Don’t Test Anything Ourselves
No More Glyphosate NZ has no lab, no in-house scientists, and no testing equipment. We’re a citizen-led campaign, not a laboratory. Every single sample we’ve ever reported on has been sent to an independent, third-party facility for analysis. We pay for the testing. The laboratory performs the analysis and reports the results. We have no ability to influence those results.
Who is Hill Laboratories?
Hill Labs is New Zealand’s largest privately owned analytical testing laboratory. Founded in Hamilton in 1984 by Dr Roger and Anne Hill, it has led the way in analytical testing for more than 40 years. Today it provides analytical testing, inspection and certification services across New Zealand’s agricultural, environmental and food sectors, including maturity testing for Zespri kiwifruit and MPI-recognised authentication testing for mānuka honey.
In other words, it’s the kind of laboratory an exporter, a council, or a government agency would use — not a laboratory set up to produce a particular result.
What “IANZ Accredited” Means
Hill Labs is accredited by International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ), the Crown entity responsible for assessing the technical competence of testing laboratories in New Zealand. IANZ is a full member of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and a signatory to its mutual recognition arrangement — meaning IANZ accreditation is recognised internationally, not just domestically.
Accreditation isn’t a formality. It means a lab has been independently assessed against five things:
- Competence and experience of staff
- Integrity and traceability of equipment and materials
- Technical validity of the methods used
- Validity and suitability of the results produced
- Compliance with recognised management-system standards
Hill Labs performs its glyphosate residue testing under its IANZ-accredited laboratory quality system, using methods that fall within its accredited scope.
Hill Labs also undertakes testing as part of MPI-recognised export assurance programmes. For example, mānuka honey destined for some overseas markets may require glyphosate residue testing by an appropriately recognised laboratory before it can be exported.
Why the Method Matters: LC-MS/MS
Glyphosate can be tested using different methods, and they are not all equally reliable. Cheaper rapid-test kits often use ELISA (antibody-based) methods, which are more susceptible to cross-reactivity than LC-MS/MS and can be less suitable where highly accurate quantification at very low concentrations is required.
Hill Labs uses LC-MS/MS (liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry) for glyphosate analysis. This is widely regarded as the gold standard analytical method for detecting and quantifying glyphosate at trace levels — it’s what regulators and export-compliance testing rely on, because it detects and measures the actual glyphosate molecule rather than relying on an antibody reaction, and it can reliably distinguish glyphosate from its breakdown product, AMPA.
What a “Reporting Limit” Means
Every laboratory test has a reporting limit — the lowest concentration the laboratory can reliably detect and measure.
In early 2026, Hill Labs standardised the reporting limit for routine glyphosate testing (excluding honey) from 0.05 mg/kg to 0.01 mg/kg. Earlier testing used different reporting limits depending on the product being analysed and the validated analytical method in use at the time.
A result of “<0.010 mg/kg” means glyphosate was not detected above that reporting limit. It doesn’t necessarily mean zero glyphosate is present—only that, if it is present, it is below the level the laboratory can reliably detect and measure.
We report results this way deliberately, rather than describing products as “glyphosate-free”, because that’s what the evidence supports.
What Accreditation Doesn’t Tell You
To be upfront about the limits of what we’re presenting: an IANZ-accredited result tells you the reported measurement has been produced using a validated analytical method operating within an accredited quality system — that the lab correctly identified and measured what was in the sample.
It doesn’t, on its own, tell you whether our sampling approach (number of samples, which products, which batches) is statistically representative of everything on New Zealand shelves, and our results aren’t peer-reviewed in the way a published scientific study would be.
That’s why we identify the products tested and, wherever possible, include details such as the batch number, best before date and test result so readers can see exactly what was analysed. Our results are real, accredited laboratory data from specific retail products — not a comprehensive national survey.
The Bottom Line
We use Hill Labs because they’re independent of us, accredited by a recognised authority, and using a method appropriate to the question we’re asking. We don’t control the results, and we report them whether they’re reassuring or concerning — as our oat testing (no detectable glyphosate across six products), flour testing (three products with no detectable glyphosate and one with a measurable residue), and multiple rounds of honey testing have demonstrated.
Disclosure: No More Glyphosate NZ pays Hill Labs commercial rates to undertake this testing. Hill Labs has no editorial involvement in our reporting, does not sponsor our work, and does not review or approve our articles before publication.
Testing costs are covered entirely by public donations. If you’d like to help fund the next round, you can support us here.
Image Source & Attribution
The feature image on this page was created using AI-assisted image generation from an original concept developed by No More Glyphosate NZ and refined for publication in Canva.
