The Association for the Cannabinoid Industry (ACI) submitted a complete toxicological package to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) on Friday, 4 November 2022, to support members’ novel food applications.

These applications account for 33% of the applications made to the FSA, and align to approximately half of the products identified on the public list. Currently there are around 12,000 ingestible CBD products listed by FSA. These products are currently permitted for sale in England and Wales, pending full market authorisation.

Dr Parveen Bhatarah, PhD, FRSC is Regulatory and Compliance Associate at the ACI:
“We look forward to our members achieving validation, and authorisation thereafter.”

What happens next?

Following the submission of this tox data, the ACI anticipates member applications will move from the ‘awaiting evidence’ section of the public list to the validated column. A risk assessment stage will then begin, during which FSA’s expert teams will examine each individual application before progressing to recommendations for authorisation.

In addition to this milestone submission, the ACI has been collating a data assemblage to further support members’ European Foods Safety Agency (EFSA) novel food submissions.

“This, alongside our own toxicology data, will aim to answer the questions raised by EFSA in June 2022 in a timely and cost effective package.”