The UK is reportedly trying to eventually align itself with Europe's Novel Food for its CBD products

The efforts of United Kingdom to regulate CBD as a novel food could suffer yet another setback. Indeed, the UK authorities are closing in on a possible return to the European food safety framework, a change of course that could plunge thousands of products into a new zone of regulatory uncertainty.

According to a letter sent on March 12 by Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the Food Standards Scotland (FSS), and unveiled by HempToday, the British government wants to set up a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement (SPS) with the’European Union by mid-2027. Such a move would, in effect, realign the UK with European rules concerning Novel Food, including CBD.

While the FSA assures us that it will continue to examine current cases, it nevertheless invites the companies concerned to anticipate future alignment with the European system. This message is likely to prompt many players in the sector to ask themselves whether they should continue to invest in a lengthy and costly procedure, or review their strategy before the new rules render their business model obsolete.

Major disagreement over safe daily dose of CBD

At the heart of this new area of turbulence is a widening gap between the safety assumptions adopted by UK regulators and those advocated at European level.

In the United Kingdom, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has so far been based on a reference daily intake set at 10 mg CBD. But in February, experts from’European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have suggested a much lower threshold, around 2 mg per day for CBD isolate, due to health concerns that have yet to be fully clarified.

These values are not official ceilings, but they directly guide risk assessments and condition authorization decisions. In the industry, several players believe that a threshold as low as 2 mg would render a large proportion of CBD products useless, by making them too low-dosed to produce perceptible effects. This would undermine the economic equilibrium of many brands.

This divergence means that companies involved in the British process now face a delicate choice: adapt their formulations, completely overhaul their ranges... or abandon their projects if the investment no longer makes sense.

Thousands of products in the queue

The UK has opened its authorization process for new CBD foods in 2022, and approximately 12,000 products have since been submitted. More than 700 products have already been withdrawn, either voluntarily or after being disqualified.

The FSA/FSS letter states that ’a significant number of applications processed by the FSA/FSS marketing authorization service are unlikely to reach a ministerial decision before the agreement is in place«. In other words, many CBD products may not receive a final decision in the UK before the regulations change again.

A transition to the European route would probably entail additional costs, if a real Novel Food authorization were to be created in Europe. The procedure has virtually ground to a halt 7 years after the’inclusion of CBD in the Novel Food catalog.

Francesco Mirizzi, General Manager of the’European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA), said that some applications may be sufficiently advanced to be approved before the UK fully aligns with EU rules. «Our isolate has passed the risk management stage and is in the final stages of public consultation to receive a recommendation to the minister and, ultimately, ministerial authorization,» he said, referring to the FSA process.

Its consortium, the’EIHA projects GmbH, currently has two major portfolios in process in the UK, one for CBD isolate and the other for full-spectrum CBD, covering more than 4,000 products. Under this approach, a single file can represent vast «portfolios» of products, using standardized formulations to cover many similar items.

In addition to the files supported by EIHA, the 7,000 products are spread across smaller, fragmented applications. These companies could be faced with a difficult choice: put a piece back into the machine to adapt to a European system that is still not functional, or abandon the process altogether.

A regulatory process still marked by delays and confusion

The UK's new CBD edibles program has already been criticized for its lack of coherence, and slow progress. Early in the process, regulators allowed some products to appear on a public list while removing hundreds of others, leaving many companies with no clear prospect of legal certainty.

In a letter dated March 23, the FSA said it planned to make recommendations to ministers later in the year on several applications that had been subject to public consultation in 2025. But it also urged applicants to ensure that their products correspond exactly to the dossiers to which they are linked, a sign that any future authorization could be strictly enforced.

For an industry that has been waiting years for clarity, the prospect of a new regulatory shake-up could accelerate consolidation and push smaller CBD brands into a dead end.