We are now week 7 into lockdown with the hopeful lifting of restrictions from Monday 11th of May. Although they will be a very light lifting of the restrictions. It’s looking like social distancing will continue until the end of the year ☹.
What does this mean for the CBD industry?
We have the FSA deadline for the 31/03/2021 for the novel food status issue. From what I have heard the FSA are sticking with that date. I thought it may have been put back due to the coronavirus, but they are sticking with that date. Most of us CBD companies are still unsure of what we need to do. We have spoken to all our suppliers and our raw suppliers have a novel food licence. Our golden extract suppliers do not have a novel food licence and the broad-spectrum extracts come from the USA which does not follow EU/UK regulation. However, for both the golden extracts and broad extract suppliers they would have to apply for the novel food status in order to sell to us.
We would hope that we can continue to sell under the novel food licence supplied by the producers of the extracts. We do not grow and extract the CBD we just buy the finished product and dilute with carrier oils to make the tinctures. We have been selling oil since 2016 and we are one of the few companies who test our extracts for consistency and quality.
Having spoken to other CBD companies none of us know exactly what we need to do. With the coronavirus having shut down the economy its made it even worse to get that information. We will continue to sell our CBD oils like we have done for the last 4 years until we are told we are not allowed to anymore. I do not think it will come to that but having no information makes it a highly unstable time for us which has been compounded by the coronavirus.
We will update you as soon as we know more information.