The post Who changed EU novel food rules? Those who profit from the sick was originally published on HempToday. Subscribe to our newsletter, check out our events and follow us on facebook, instagram and twitter.
As European hemp food stakeholders have taken up the battle to reverse recent changes to EU rules on hemp extracts, the whole furor begs a question: How did regulations that producers earlier described as “workable,” transform into an added headache that the industry doesn’t need?
In a nutshell, the updated rules now require producers of hemp extracts used in food – including, importantly, CBD – to undergo stringent and costly registration requirements; the rules guide the EU’s Novel Food Catalogue, a listing of foods that were not commonly eaten in the member states before 1997. The Catalogue is essentially a food safety mechanism, intended and invented to control new, genetically or synthetically designed food products before market entry – not to hinder products that have been consumed for ages.
Some stakeholders realized last year that changes in the Food Catalog (which officially took effect Jan. 20, 2019) were coming, and began filing registration paperwork.
That started what we might call a “cycle of compliance” in which producers who filed for Novel Food status were confirming their products should be thus categorized.
