I wanted to share with you both an explanation and a clarification.
Good Hemp, Inc., a food and beverage company, has announced that it will start distributing beverages infused with hemp seed oil through alcohol beverage distributor Premium Brands of Northwest Arkansas. (link) As I have noted many times before (e.g., link), and as you likely well know, the FDA still does not allow the sale of beverages infused with CBD and most other cannabis byproducts. So, reading a story like this, you may be wondering, how is Good Hemp doing this without running afoul of FDA regulations, and isn’t a federally-licensed alcohol beverage distributor similarly playing chicken with the Feds?
Well, the press release notes that these beverages are infused with hemp seed oil, not CBD. Hemp seed oil has been specifically called out by the FDA as “generally recognized as safe” when certain criteria are met (explained in an excellent summary prepared by my FDA regulatory partner, Cori Annapolen Goldberg and her team – link), meaning that the FDA has already approved its use in certain food and beverages (along with hemp protein powder and hulled hemp seed), unlike hemp-based CBD. (link) The difference may be subtle from a consumer/marketing perspective, but from an FDA perspective, the product should be okay so long as it satisfies the FDA’s criteria.
Source: Lexology
