New Regulations Allow Hemp To Be Sold As Food In Australia

Low psychoactive hemp seeds can now be used as food in Australia with effective from 12^th November this year. The new regulation came with the changes in the Food Standards Code in the country and the amendments in the jurisdiction are being made to accommodate the change.

The New Labelling

The cannabis logo has been a part of the clothing and building products made using hemp but it won’t be used for hemp foods. The restriction of the code includes that the cannabis plant is not to be used on the packaging in any way except the seed. Cannabis as a word is also not to be used.

Great care has been taken that citizens should not be misguided with marketing and feel that it is weed on sale. “Ministers were really concerned that there might be marketing that might promote it as having some psychoactive properties, but low-THC has none of that,” said a spokesperson from a Food Standards Australia and New Zealand to ABC News. She added, “They wanted to set some limits or restrictions in the code, and then legislation that would prevent it from being represented as being psychoactive.”

Fostering Industry Growth

Being approved by countries like the UK, the United States, Canada and others in Europe, it has finally been approved in Australia giving the agricultural something positive to look forward to. “This is all about promoting hemp and helping people understand that it’s not a drug, and there is no drug component in it,” said Lyn Stephenson, a grower in Kyneton to the publication.

She further added, “It’s about creating a market for it so that farmers can grow it. Because it is an ecologically sustainable crop as well, because there’s a deep root system and that breaks down the soil and it’s sown closely together, the leaves drop and mulch and break down into the soil. So it’s a really good, rotational crop.”