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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Friday, April 19, 2024
The Food and Drug Administration is calling for a new “regulatory pathway” to allow for the use of use of cannabidiol, or CBD, in dietary supplements and food additives, after concluding that “it is not apparent how CBD products could meet safety standards” for those products.
The value of the U.S. industrial hemp crop in 2021 was $824 million, the National Agricultural Statistics Service said in its first report on the cannabis crop that was legalized in the 2018 farm bill.
Partially motivated by funding concerns, two prominent hemp-growing states recently decided to let the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulate hemp within their borders, and others are still in the process of deciding whether to hand over authority to USDA as the pilot programs authorized under the 2014 farm bill expire at the end of this year.
USDA loosened regulatory requirements for hemp in a new rule issued Friday, giving producers more time to harvest their crops after testing for THC levels and not requiring they use laboratories registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration until the end of 2022.
The industrial hemp industry’s “green rush,” which began in mid-2017, has cooled, at least for those growing hemp for the cannabidiol (CBD) market and many companies that process it.
Many in the hemp industry are worried a new Drug Enforcement Administration rule will make processors vulnerable to enforcement under the Controlled Substances Act, and some are looking at filing a lawsuit to challenge it.
Too much product, some high-profile bankruptcies and continued regulatory uncertainty contributed to making 2019 a tough year for hemp growers, but proponents of the versatile plant say it’s still viable in the long term for uses including CBD (short for cannabidiol), food and fiber.
State agriculture departments and a broad cross-section of the hemp industry are telling USDA its rule governing domestic production will hurt the nascent industry by imposing sampling and testing requirements that are virtually impossible to meet.
USDA’s new hemp rule was generally well received by industry and states, but one longtime advocate is raising concerns that its testing requirements could create a logjam at harvest time.
Hemp growers already facing a learning curve when it comes to producing the crop this year are confronting a scarier prospect than low yields or a lack of processing facilities: the potential for seizure of their crop on the road.
