EIHA, Hemp Tea, and the Problem with “Leaves Only”

14 hours ago
10 min read

How did hemp tea regulation get here?

EIHA, Hemp Tea and the Problem with “Leaves Only”

Nearly two weeks ago, I received an email that ultimately sent me down a rabbit hole concerning hemp tea regulation in both the UK and EU.

Actually, I received it a few times.

It had been forwarded to me by people concerned about an email from the European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA) warning its members about the EU's move to introduce maximum THC levels for hemp leaves intended for tea.

Forwarded EIHA emails aren't particularly new to me. I've previously written articles and social media posts following concerns raised with me by its members.

On this occasion, however, something caught my attention.

40 mg/kg

The headline figure is 40 mg/kg of Δ9-THC in hemp leaves intended for the preparation of herbal infusions.

That's low.

Although, interestingly, if we're genuinely talking about leaves alone — excluding what is commonly called sugar leaf — it isn't necessarily a million miles away from what you might expect, or at least hope for, as a farmer.

But the number wasn't what caught my attention, it was the definition of the food being regulated.

The new rules concern hemp leaves, expressly separated from the flowering and fruiting tops.

That's despite there being plenty of historical evidence, both primary and secondary, demonstrating that those other aerial parts of the hemp plant have also been used historically for a range of purposes.

One of which is tea.

That raised the much bigger question:

Why are we regulating this historical food as though it was leaves only?

Cannabis has an extraordinarily long documented relationship with humans.

Across the historical record we find specific references to seed, roots, leaves, flowers, fruiting tops and preparations involving combinations of botanical parts.

For Novel Food purposes, however, we don't need to settle thousands of years of Cannabis history.

The relevant question is much more recent:

What was being consumed as food before 15 May 1997?

The evidence I've assembled points towards a considerably broader answer than leaves alone. One particularly useful example is a 1997 exchange involving MAFF, the Home Office and the German authorities, recently obtained through FOI, concerning hemp products already on the market.

The hemp tea “grey area”

Since entering the hemp and CBD industry in 2016, all I've ever heard about hemp tea is that it resides in a regulatory “grey area”.

Personally, I've never been particularly fond of the term.

Nevertheless, for the best part of eight years — from working for a trade association to founding The Hemp Hound Agency — I've often found myself explaining the general state of play to manufacturers, retailers and others operating in the sector.

Before going any further, I'm not talking about the line between genuine hemp tea and raw, unprocessed hemp flower simply being marketed as tea.

That's a whole different kettle of fish, in that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 comes into play.

No, I'm talking about botanical material genuinely prepared and presented for use as a herbal infusion, and understanding how we arrived at the present position requires looking at something I've been writing about for years:

the changing regulatory definition of hemp foods.

The plant versus its compounds

If you've followed my work, you'll know this isn't a new issue.

In 2017, the then Head of Novel Foods at the Food Standards Agency publicly distinguished traditionally produced whole-plant hemp/CBD extracts from selectively extracted cannabinoids.

The principle was fairly straightforward.

Traditional, unselective processes producing hemp extracts containing the naturally occurring constituents of the plant were treated differently from products focused upon particular cannabinoids.

By 2019, however, European Novel Food treatment was increasingly focused upon CBD as a compound, and upon the absence of evidence for foods specifically characterised by concentrated or isolated CBD before May 1997.

That distinction matters.

A traditional hemp food can naturally contain CBD without its historical identity necessarily being a CBD food.

Which led to one of the stranger regulatory positions I've encountered.

You could sell a whole-plant hemp food which naturally contained CBD, but characterise essentially the same thing as a CBD product, and suddenly you could find yourself facing the CBD Novel Food regime.

Potato, potato...

Only one potato gets regulated differently from the other, despite prior regulatory acceptance that both were the same.

But this article isn't about reopening the entire CBD Novel Food argument.

It's about tea.

So...

The FSA's previous public description of traditional hemp foods was broad:

“Hemp and related products, such as cold-pressed oils, are not novel because there is evidence to show a history of consumption before May 1997.”

That position mattered because Novel Food status is fundamentally historical.

The question isn't whether a regulator particularly likes a food today, it's whether that food was consumed to a significant degree before 15 May 1997, and the FSA had previously gone further in relation to tea.

In 2021, its own public material described whole-plant hemp tea as having a recognised history of consumption.

Whole-plant.

And let's be honest: “whole-plant” cannot reasonably mean leaves alone. It necessarily describes something botanically broader.

12 October 2023

In October 2023, the FSA changed its public description of which hemp products it regarded as non-novel.

The new wording closely followed the EU Novel Food Catalogue, which had itself been changed earlier that year.

And one of those changes concerned tea.

The newer definition recognised water infusions of hemp leaves, specifically where those leaves were not accompanied by flowering and fruiting tops.

That's considerably narrower than:

whole-plant tea.

And I struggle to see how “whole-plant” can reasonably become “leaves only” without somebody explaining what happened to the rest of the plant.

There is another aspect of the UK change that troubles me

To my knowledge, there was no public consultation with the UK hemp industry before the FSA changed that description.

No opportunity for businesses already operating within the market to present historical evidence.

No obvious public discussion about whether the new wording accurately represented foods available before May 1997.

And the timing was remarkable.

The FSA changed its position on 12 October 2023.

That was also the day it very publicly announced its recommendation that healthy adults should limit their consumption of CBD from food to 10 mg per day.

Unsurprisingly, the 10 mg announcement attracted attention.

The considerably quieter change to the FSA's description of traditional hemp foods attracted far less, if at all.

It was hidden in plain sight — but it was noticed

The contradiction concerning tea is difficult to ignore.

An earlier FSA position recognised:

whole-plant hemp tea.

The subsequent UK and EU description recognised:

leaves without the flowering and fruiting tops.

Those aren't synonymous.

Perhaps that could be dismissed as an unfortunate change in regulatory wording if the historical evidence supported the narrower category.

The problem is:

it doesn't appear to.

And that's where this story gets considerably more interesting.

Is it just the regulators contradicting their position?

No.

In June 2023, EIHA was celebrating the change to the EU Novel Food Catalogue.

EIHA had submitted evidence concerning the historical consumption of hemp leaves and helped establish their non-novel status when used for water infusion.

At the time, the change was presented as an important victory for the European hemp industry.

EIHA's Director, Lorenza Romanese, said the change would bring:

“much-needed legal certainty”

for hemp seed-derived foods and leaves for water infusion, while generating opportunities for farmers and businesses.

And let's be fair, demonstrating that hemp leaves were consumed before May 1997 was an achievement.

The problem is what that achievement does, and does not, establish.

Evidence demonstrating that leaves were historically consumed does not establish that only leaves were historically consumed, yet the resulting regulatory description specifically excluded the flowering and fruiting tops.

And that's where I think the industry should have asked another question.

Was “leaves only” actually an accurate description of the historical food?

And there's something else that bothers me.

In 2021, EIHA itself produced a document called Cooking with Hemp.

That document contains evidence of culinary use of hemp flower, including material relevant to tea, before 1997.

So evidence apparently available to EIHA already pointed towards something broader than leaves alone.

Which raises another question:

Why pursue recognition framed specifically around leaves when evidence apparently available to EIHA pointed towards broader historical botanical use?

I couldn't make sense of it.

And then I looked at what had happened in Germany.

There is another part of this history that deserves scrutiny

Daniel Kruse has been President of EIHA since 2019.

In 2021, his company, Hempro, was involved in litigation concerning the importation into Germany of stripped hemp leaves from Austria.

That fact becomes relevant because EIHA's subsequent initiative concerned recognition of precisely that botanical material:

hemp leaves for water infusion.

At the same time, EIHA's own published material pointed towards broader historical culinary use of the hemp plant.

To be absolutely clear, none of this establishes that EIHA's regulatory work was undertaken for the benefit of its President or his company, and I am not alleging that it was.

But it does make the question worth asking:

Why did a European industry association pursue recognition framed specifically around leaves when evidence apparently available to it pointed towards broader historical botanical use — and what consideration was given to members trading in products containing flowering or fruiting material?

And was the potential effect of defining the category that narrowly considered for members selling hemp teas containing flowering or fruiting material?

Those products aren't hypothetical.

I know businesses and suppliers within this industry whose products have involved considerably more than stripped fan leaves.

Which brings us back to the email that started all of this.

Fast-forward to 2026

The European Commission has now adopted maximum THC levels for the very category EIHA helped establish.

From 1 January 2027, hemp leaves intended for water infusion will be subject to a maximum of 40 mg/kg Δ9-THC, alongside specific preparation and labelling requirements.

EIHA isn't celebrating this time.

In the email forwarded to me, it told members that throughout the regulatory discussions it had repeatedly raised concerns with the Commission and Member States.

In particular, EIHA said it argued that the proposed limits were excessively restrictive and risked:

“severely undermining, or de facto eliminating, the existing market for hemp leaves and hemp leaf infusions.”

And that's what sent me down the rabbit hole.

Because I started wondering whether the problem really began with 40 mg/kg, or whether it began several years earlier when a potentially much broader historical botanical food became regulatory shorthand for:

leaves.

If flowering and fruiting tops were historically consumed as part of hemp botanical beverages before May 1997, excluding them from the definition isn't a trivial botanical distinction, it changes the identity of the food being discussed.

So I started checking.

I went backwards

Through the current legislation, the Novel Food Catalogue, FSA publications and archived webpages, regulatory correspondence, records disclosed under Freedom of Information, European material surrounding the introduction of the Novel Food regime, evidence of products actually being sold before 1997, and eventually through historical scientific, commercial and botanical material describing the preparation and consumption of hemp and Cannabis beverages considerably earlier than that.

Then I had to come forwards again, because demonstrating historical consumption answers only part of the question.

Non-novel does not mean unregulated

If hemp tea is placed on the market today, there are still questions concerning food safety, THC, contaminants, microbiology, preparation, labelling and, particularly in the UK, controlled-drug legislation.

Historical consumption doesn't make those requirements disappear.

It establishes a starting point from which the modern regulatory questions then have to be considered.

And at some point I realised I wasn't writing an article anymore.

Two weeks later, I had more than 300 pages.

Introducing the Evidence File

The result is:

Hemp Tea and Botanical Beverages: Historical Consumption, Regulatory Status and Compliance Evidence File — Version 1.

It is an independently produced, evidence-led examination of the historical consumption and regulatory treatment of hemp botanical beverages, together with the compliance considerations affecting products placed on the market today.

It doesn't declare every hemp tea legal.

It doesn't declare every hemp tea non-novel.

It doesn't certify anybody's product.

And it isn't legal advice.

What it does is put the historical sources, legislation, regulatory records, scientific material and resulting analysis together in one place, with the evidence cross-referenced so that individual propositions can be traced back to their supporting source.

And importantly:

I haven't written it to tell the hemp industry what it wants to hear.

I've written it so that industry, regulators, enforcement authorities and consumers can at least begin with the same evidence.

So, who is it for?

I've written three short accompanying letters.

The first is for businesses already operating in the hemp tea industry.

Use the Evidence File to examine what you're currently doing. Make changes where you consider them necessary. And if enforcement occurs based upon an interpretation you believe the evidence doesn't support, the underlying material may assist in examining and, where appropriate, challenging that position.

The second is for people considering entering the market.

Before potentially investing thousands of pounds in cultivation, processing, testing, products, packaging and compliance, spending £25 understanding the regulatory environment might help you decide whether the opportunity is actually worth pursuing.

The answer might be yes, It might be no.

Either way, that's useful information to have before spending the money.

And the third is for consumers.

Because consumers shouldn't need to understand 30 years of Novel Food history to expect that the person selling them a food knows what they're selling, has considered its safety and can explain the basis upon which it is being placed on the market.

Different audiences, different decisions, same evidence.

And what about the UK?

There's another reason I don't think UK operators should dismiss the new EU Regulation simply because it doesn't presently apply in Great Britain.

The UK and EU are negotiating a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement intended to align significant areas of food and agricultural regulation.

The final effect of that agreement remains to be seen.

But the EU hemp-leaf limits take effect on 1 January 2027, while the developing UK–EU arrangements create an obvious reason for UK operators to understand this issue before, rather than after, any future alignment affects them.

Which brings me back to where this started.

An email warning the industry about:

40 mg/kg.

I think that limit deserves scrutiny.

But after spending two weeks following the evidence backwards, I think there's a question that comes before it:

Why did we end up regulating the historical food as leaves only in the first place?

That's the question that produced the Evidence File.

The complete Hemp Tea and Botanical Beverages: Historical Consumption, Regulatory Status and Compliance Evidence File — Version 1 is available as a digital PDF for £25.