If you thought only U.S. hemp and CBD industry players were running into problems with regulators, you thought wrong. The EU’s “Novel Foods” rules are threatening the very livelihood of small hemp farmers who are being told that they can no longer sell the hemp products that they have been selling unless those products are taken through a lengthy and costly testing process.
It all started when hemp was included in the EU’s Novel Food Catalogue as a food item that wasn’t consumed within the region before 1997. This means that for any food ingredient derived from hemp to be accepted for consumption in the EU, such a product must undergo extensive safety testing and research to show that it will not cause any harm to those who consume those products.
The Novel Food Catalogue was created as a safeguard to protect EU member states from the adverse effects of synthetic, genetically modified and other manufactured food products coming on the market.
For Andris Visnevskis and his wife Deborah Paulino, the effect of the Novel Food Catalogue has been that the local authorities (in the area where their Obelisk Farm is located) notified them that they should immediately stop selling the different hemp teas that they have been preparing from their small hemp farm in Latvia.
While the decision to include hemp and its derivatives in the Novel Food Catalogue was made in January, the Latvian couple only got to learn about it a week ago when they were ordered to stop selling their hemp products. The duo wishes that they had been notified earlier, at least before they planted their current hemp crop which is almost ready to be harvested.
The European Industrial Hemp Association-EIHA is not taking this ruling lying down. They have dispatched a team to Brussels (the headquarters of the EU) to present evidence to the effect that hemp flowers, leaves and extracts have been part of the European diet for hundreds of years.
If the efforts of EIHA bear fruit, then hemp leaves, flowers and extracts will be removed from the Novel Food Catalogue and farmers like Andris Visnevskis and his wife will not have to close shop or incur high product research and testing costs.
Hemp experts believe that what is happening in the EU should be a lesson for the U.S. hemp industry players like Green Hygienics Holdings Inc. (OTCQB: GRYN) and Hemptown USA to form a strong unified body through which they can engage regulators on matters affecting the industry.
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