In October 2018, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) submitted an Article 4 to the EU, calling for CBD isolate in MCT oil to be classified as a novel food.
This was a result of the Home Office and 'some CBD companies' asking about the novel status of CBD in 2015, which was relayed to The Hemp Hound Agency by the current head of novel foods in 2023.
An Article 4 submission serves as an opinion on whether a food has a history of consumption. If it was consumed before May 1997, it's non-novel. If there is little to no evidence, it's novel.
Once an opinion is put to paper, it's submitted (pre-Brexit) to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which then decides whether to approve it and update the novel food catalogue.
The EU accepted the FSA’s submission, and in January 2019, CBD was officially classified as a novel food.
Now...
If that was the end of the story, this would be a short article. But this is about novel foods, interests are at play, and a battleground between whole-plant cannabis and its isolated compounds emerged from the point the EU made their announcement.
After all, it was CBD that was defined as novel, not just CBD isolate, as originally specified in the Article 4 submission, and from that point, regulatory authorities in the UK and EU have since focused on the compound itself, ignoring the other active compounds found in whole-plant products, which the FSA had already classified as non-novel in 2017.
When the FSA’s Article 4 was submitted, the name of the company that requested the determination was redacted.
That redaction was lifted on 25/02/25 after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from The Hemp Hound Agency, revealing that the applicant was Marry Jane GmbH.
However, there are issues with the FOI response from the FSA. The biggest problem is that while the request was for an unredacted version of the Article 4 submitted to the EU, what was provided is noticeably different from that which was published by the EU—particularly in the Reasons Statement section.
Seemingly between submission and publication, any mention of cold-pressed hemp containing CBD or that ethanol extraction is a non-novel process was removed from the Article 4 determination.
A FOI request to the EU’s EFSA confirmed that no redactions were made by EFSA—they published the document exactly as it was received from the FSA.
This means that if key references to whole-plant consumption were removed, that decision was made by the FSA before submission, not by the EU.
But, the FSA has provided a copy of the Article 4 they submitted to the EU...
I’ll let you decide what that suggests, but based on the available information, this raises two key questions:
Did Marry Jane request these removals?
Who would benefit from excluding evidence of whole-plant CBD consumption?
To answer those questions, we need to consider where Marry Jane was between 2015 to 2018.
According to Wayback Machine records and public searches, Marry Jane was launched in 2017 by Mischa Gribi and Afrim Saliu. However, the marryjane.com domain has pings dating back to 2000.
Their Swiss website, marryjane.ch, was launched on 13/06/2018.
According to an article, Gribi was growing hemp two years prior to the launch of Marry Jane, so there could have been a request to determine the novel status of CBD prior to the launch of a product.
That’s how Article 4 determinations function—companies seek an opinion on the novel status of a food before releasing products, as securing a 'novel' or 'non-novel' classification can shape their market position.
If the opinion is ‘non-novel’, the company doesn’t need to conduct safety studies, as historical consumption is accepted as proof of safety.
If it is classified as ‘novel’, the company securing the determination often benefits from an effective monopoly, since competitors must fund their own safety studies before selling similar products
But getting that opinion—at least the one you want—depends entirely on what evidence is submitted and what the relevant authority (in this case, the FSA) chooses to accept.
This is where a much bigger issue emerges.
It's here that I've got to plant a seed, see, Whole-plant CBD products were not just considered non-novel in the UK—this status was recognized across multiple jurisdictions. Yet, within a year, that classification was reversed.
Any policy shift of this scale has consequences, especially when it impacts something as broad as food regulation.
A recent case highlights this perfectly—the FSA’s handling of monk fruit decoctions.
In R (Guilin GFS Monk Fruit Corporation) v Food Standards Agency [2024], the FSA was challenged for rejecting holistic evidence in a novel food determination.
Guilin intended to market a product partially focused on an active compound (mogrosides) and proved consumption of monk fruit through holistic evidence:
Recipes
B2B and B2C receipts
Scientific proof of the fruit’s natural composition, including active compounds
Despite this, the FSA refused to classify monk fruit decoctions as non-novel.
The judge ruled against the FSA, criticizing them for:
Being too rigid in their interpretation of Novel Food Regulations
Rejecting holistic evidence that demonstrated historic consumption
Applying a narrow focus on product sales rather than food consumption
The court also reminded the FSA of a fundamental principle in Novel Food Regulations:
"An extract of a recognized non-novel food, provided it is unselective in nature and derived from traditional processes, is by extension non-novel."
This meant that monk fruit decoctions were automatically non-novel—yet the FSA still tried to classify them as novel.
Did CBD & Monk Fruit Get Caught in the Same Policy Shift?
In 2017, the FSA accepted holistic evidence to verify the consumption of CBD through hemp. By 2018, they rejected the same type of evidence—not just for CBD but for monk fruit decoctions in 2023, too.
Coincidence?
Keep that in mind.
But back to Marry Jane, and they do not look like a company who would benefit from CBD being defined outright as a novel food. They do have 7 entries on the FSA public list for CBD products, 6 are seemingly whole-plant oils for white labelling, and 1 is for bulk isolate without any carrier oil.
So on that basis, they could have applied to determine the novel status of CBD, but it's unlikely that they would have asked for a blanket application of that status, or that they would have asked for any mention of cold press and ethanol extraction to be removed from the resulting Article 4.
What's more, their products are listed under the European Industrial Hemp Association's (EIHA) novel foods consortium application, yet if Marry Jane had truly initiated the novel food process with any sort of intent, wouldn't they have submitted their own independent application?
This raises the question: Was Marry Jane's role in the Article 4 process as decisive as it now appears, or were they simply a convenient reference for a predetermined regulatory shift?
According to further articles, Saliu invested initially in 2017, which led to an updated growing space, a shop in Zurich managed by Gribi, and two others being managed by partners. Further investment was secured in 2020, which led to the construction of the largest CBD facility in Switzerland which was projected to be able to produce 250kg of biomass per month.
By all accounts, that investment was to help them to expand into other countries, which included Germany, Austria and Spain, but nowhere is the UK mentioned
And then for the elephant in the room...
If you know of what to do to determine the novel status of CBD in 2015, you would know that the EU approve all opinions provided by the domestic food safety regulator of the EU member state that has been tasked with determining a novel status of a food. So why would a Swizz company with a focus on whole-plant products ask the FSA to determine the novel status of CBD, isolated or otherwise? Why not go direct to the EU, or engage with one of the countries that are closer to home?
I mean, when considering Switzerland and the EU, Britain is one of the furthest countries away.
That's what I don't get, but the question of course leads back to whether Marry Jane asked for a blanket determination on CBD, or whether they asked for mentions of cold press hemp and ethanol extraction being removed from an Article 4 that had already been submitted...
I would say 'No!', Marry Jane may have asked for the novel status of CBD isolate, but from there, I suspect that someone perverted the Article 4 process for an agenda, which can be seen in the FOI below.
What you're seeing is an FOI response from the FSA for all communications and conversations between the FSA and EU member states about CBD between March 2018 to March 2019.
There are two points of interest with the file above:
It shows that EIHA and the Cannabis Trades Association (CTA) supplied what could be described as holistic evidence for CBD consumption, consisting of recipes involving hemp, advertising and receipts for cannabis-based products, and scientific papers showing that CBD is one of the core compounds that is derived from the cannabis as a whole, yet this was dismissed as it didn't show sales of CBD products prior to 1997 (Monk fruit!).
The FSA and EU member states can be seen accepting a history of consuming hemp, including flower, which according to the Article 4 submitted by the FSA in October 2018, has a history of consumption, and contains CBD.
All of a sudden, a timeline becomes established
What wasn't mentioned earlier is that when the FSA defined whole-plant products as non-novel in 2017, they also defined CBD isolate as a novel food. This means that the application submitted by Marry Jane in 2015 was completed, with whole-plant and isolate clearly defined, but for some reason, the resulting Article 4 was not submitted until 2018, after the FSA and EU member states had discussed how to reverse the acceptance of whole-plant products being non-novel, and move towards a focus on the compound itself.
The question is: who would benefit from hijacking an Article 4?
The answer lies with the FSA, of course, and it was provided to The Hemp Hound Agency in March 2023.
Above is a response from the current head of novel foods to a question regarding the Home Office, who according to his predecessor, felt pressured by the Home Office to define all cannabinoids as novel foods.
The question focuses on an event that occurred in 2017 at the CTA AGM. The then chairman, Mike Harlington, and the former Compliance Director, Guy Coxall, relayed to those who attended that years AGM that they had both been to York to talk directly to Ruth Willis, the then head of novel foods.
However, in 2017, there were no companies in the UK that were applying for an extraction license that the Home Office would take seriously enough to ask the FSA clarification of the novel status of CBD, as is suggested (almost) by the current head of novel foods.
2015 though, that's different. Marry Jane's interests were in expanding in Switzerland, and to supply their push into other countries, but British Sugar, they entered an agreement with GW Pharmaceuticals in that year to grow a CBD rich strain of cannabis for the manufacture of Epidiolex.
So it's more than likely that 'some CBD companies', as defined by the FSA, included GW Pharmaceuticals and British Sugar, who were actively engaging with the Home Office.
Marry Jane asked as well, but the uncertainty in this situation is whether they knew, or had connections with GW Pharmaceuticals and/or British Sugar at the time that they approached to FSA.
A comprehensive search by The Hemp Hound Agency has been unable to find any connection
But from what I have seen, I suspect that there isn't one. And if you were to look deeply into Marry Jane, I think that like me, you'll see a company whose interests lie in the whole-plant, and not so much with CBD isolate.
GW Pharmaceuticals and British Sugar however, their interests are with plant compounds, whilst the Home Office restrict access the plant that the compounds come from, and in this case, through interaction with the FSA.
Conclusion
If we take everything at face value, the novel food process for CBD appears to be a natural regulatory evolution. But when you look at the timeline, when you see how whole-plant CBD was accepted, then reversed, and how certain players positioned themselves in the years between, this starts to look less like regulation and more like market control.
But then, it's always looked like that, especially from 2020 when Novel Food Regulations for CBD were based on 16 lab reports and literature for Epidiolex, and how much visible influence the Home Office has over the consumer hemp and CBD industry.
Marry Jane GmbH may have made the initial request, but they are not the ones who gained from the outcome. The real benefactors were GW Pharmaceuticals and British Sugar, who had direct engagement with the Home Office in 2015, the same year the FSA were first asked to determine CBD's novel status. Three years later, after regulatory discussions at the EU level, an Article 4 submission conveniently aligned with their interests, after any pro-whole plant language had been removed from the determination given to Marry Jane. The question we are left with is simple: If the FSA's decision on CBD was shaped not by scientific review, but by external influence, what else within the cannabis regulatory framework has been guided by industry rather than consumer safety? And how much longer can the Home Office dictate food policy that benefits pharmaceutical monopolies at the expense of public access?
Because if consumer safety was never the true priority, then what exactly has been the goal of cannabis policy in the UK?
Final thoughts
In 2023, the FSA sent The Hemp Hound Agency a screenshot of the Article 4 that they say they submitted to the EU, but until 25/02/25, they have resisted publishing an unredacted copy of the whole document.
The screenshot was given because the EU published Article 4 was submitted to the FSA as evidence in a complaint against their management of CBD novel foods.
There were a few reasons for submitting, but the main one
was the redaction on the Reasons Statement.
That redaction box is approximately 19 characters long, dependent on spaces and letter sizes. 'Epidyolex/Epidiolex' fits that space.
The FSA refused to take the Article 4 as evidence in my complaint, which in part focused on the creation of a cartel market by the FSA that was designed to protect GW Pharmaceuticals' monopoly over cannabis.
They did, however, treat it as a seperate enquiry, and when responding, they provided the screenshot, but the redaction box had been shifted to expose the tail of a 'Y' exactly where one needed to be if the redaction box hid 'Epidyolex/Epidiolex'.
As we now know, it's also the place where a 'Y' tail would be for Marry Jane GmbH, which isn't 19 characters long, but it still might as well be 'Epidyolex/Epidiolex'.
Novel foods as a process has been perverted. That can be seen with the FSA FOI response where consumption of CBD through hemp is accepted, but the lack of sales of CBD products prior to 1997 makes wholeplant products novel, despite being defined as non-novel, presumably due to Marry Jane's application to determine the novel status of CBD isolate.
But the only beneficiary of the novel foods process has been GW Pharmaceuticals, who registered an interest in CBD supplemental products in 2006, and whose data was used to define Novel Food Regulations for CBD products, shortly after medical cannabis was legalised in the UK based on a public campaign that focused heavily on Epidiolex.
At the end of the day, some might argue that I was wrong, but when it comes to the idea that it might as well be Epidyolex/Epidiolex, I would like to think that it's something we could all agree with.
Oh, and we can also say that the FSA, despite their claim, might not have sent me the actual Article 4 that they submitted to the EU in 2018.
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