The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) published on 3 September the recommendation the CBD sector had been waiting on for seven years: authorising the first three cannabidiol novel food applications. Its board votes on 16 September in Swansea and, if it agrees, the agency will pass the recommendation to ministers in England and Wales. Behind those three dossiers sit roughly 3,000 products currently sold in Great Britain under a provisional list, with no firm authorisation.
What is being authorised, and on what terms
The three applications with positive safety opinions from the FSA and Food Standards Scotland are a synthetic CBD (RP 7, from Chanelle McCoy CBD) and two CBD isolates: RP 350, from Cannaray Brands, and RP 427, from EIHA projects, the latter hemp-derived. All three start from a minimum purity of 98%.
The green light is not a blank cheque. It comes with fairly specific conditions of authorisation:
- A provisional acceptable daily intake of 10 mg of CBD per day for adults.
- Label warnings aimed at under-18s and at people who are pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to conceive.
- Warnings for anyone on medication or who is immunosuppressed.
- Strict compositional specifications, with low limits for delta-9-THC and other controlled cannabinoids.
The preceding public consultation ran for twelve weeks and drew 46 responses, 68% of which backed the agency’s approach. The FSA also plans enforcement guidance for control authorities in the coming months, and more applications are queued behind these three. The full FSA board paper is public.
10 mg in Great Britain, 2 mg in the European Union
The figure that will move most paperwork is the gap with Brussels. In February 2026, EFSA updated its opinion on cannabidiol and set a provisional safe intake of 0.0275 mg per kilo of body weight per day, around 2 mg a day for a 70 kg adult, after applying an uncertainty factor of 400. The British ceiling is five times higher. EFSA’s updated statement is available in full.
The practical consequence is awkward: the same food supplement can be sellable in Great Britain at 10 mg per daily serving and off the table in the European Union, where no CBD application has yet reached authorisation. For a Spanish manufacturer with customers on both sides of the Channel, that means two technical files, two labels and two sales pitches.
What changes for companies in the sector
- A large market with written rules. Anyone whose product is linked to RP 7, RP 350 or RP 427, or who has supply agreements with those holders, enters the regulated side of the British market. Everyone else stays in the limbo of the provisional list.
- The EIHA projects dossier is the European door. It is the continent’s collective industrial hemp route, designed so that member producers can rely on a shared application instead of each funding their own.
- Costlier, more traceable testing. Limits on delta-9-THC and other controlled cannabinoids demand documented batches and accredited laboratories, not certificates of convenience.
- Catalogue reformulation. Coming down from the 25 or 50 mg doses common on the shelf to a 10 mg daily ceiling forces a rethink of positioning, pack size and price per unit of product.
A divergence heading to Bilbao
Great Britain is moving towards an orderly CBD market while the EU still has not resolved its novel food procedure. Over the next two years that asymmetry will decide where products are made, where they are sold and at what margin. It is exactly the kind of conversation worth having face to face with growers, laboratories, distributors and buyers.
Spannabis B2B Bilbao 2027 brings the sector together on 11 March at the BEC VIP Hall for precisely that: regulation, market and business in a single day. You can book your ticket or request a B2B table and close meetings on a set agenda rather than swapping business cards.