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What the changes mean for the hemp industry?
"According to the catalogue, all food/food supplements products containing hemp leaves/infructescence (tea, snacks, muesli etc) or containing hemp extracts now need to obtain a pre-marketing authorisation in order to being placed on the market. These authorisations are costly in terms of time as an authorisation process takes two years plus and significant amounts of money (300.000+ Euro per product). Only large operators and corporations will be able to afford the authorisation process. This way, Small and Medium Enterprises which mainly composed the EU market today, will be naturally left out of the market and alongside, this could potentially destroy the entire rapidly emerging and thriving European hemp industry.
If Europe will not allow FBOs to fully exploit the plant as a direct consequence the EU hemp sector will collapse in favour of other markets, such as US, Canada, Switzerland and China.
EIHA in cooperation with EU institutions are planning next steps to be further developed with the aim to restore a regulation able to fulfil both scopes (art 1 point 2 of the NF regulation): protect the consumers and guarantee a smooth functioning of the internal market."