With recent changes at FDA and with industrial hemp federally, we have a golden opportunity to advance the space via its largest legal segment, food.
The fiber sector would be the biggest secondary beneficiary due to the excess of stalks produced when growing for seed, a nuisance byproduct for grain producers. It’s the rare hemp industry Win-Win.
The seed with its hard shell removed would go into dozens of new branded foods from hundreds of companies putting it in everything literally from soup to nuts.
Higher in omega-3 than salmon and with more protein than beef, it’s been a human and animal food for thousands of years. Recent studies have revealed the medical promise of the material.
It also aligns well with FDA’s new Food Pyramid, “healthy” labeling, and protein initiatives, as well as meeting domestic food security and sovereignty needs since virtually all of it now comes from abroad.
As the legal hemp segment with long the most consumers, retailers, sales and profits driving the most acres, already legally sold around the world, it is literally hemp’s low-hanging fruit for success. Shelled hempseed is even on the shelves of Walmart and Costco, and USDA has tracked the prices weekly for years; it’s just that important of a sector to hemp [PDF].
With use of certified low-THC seed bred specifically for grain, it could be used as an ingredient or directly as a disaster/famine food as it is delicious raw, tastes like pine nuts.
Anyone could participate, from the local truffle shop to a global food conglomerate.
But to get there, the segment needs some help from the Feds:
1) Mandate use of certified seed to reduce regulatory risk;
2) Since that seed is government certified to be low in THC, no THC test and no farmer background checks or fingerprinting is needed;
3) Change max THC for foods to 10 ppm, to be compliant with Canada. Currently it is 3,000 ppm (0.3%);
4) Allow use of “No THC” or “THC-free” food and dietary supplement label declarations if compliant at 10 ppm;
5) Allow use of “hempnut” as the common and usual product name descriptor for shelled or dehulled hempseed;
6) Give USDA grants to expand production and regional processing; and
7) Approve for use in National School Lunch Program and federal institutional feeding.
Bonus: the fiber sector gets four times or more tons of free or cheap stalks than seed harvested. Oddly, it appears the hemp fiber folks are sleeping on this massive opportunity to reduce their cost of raw material while also funding their fiber operations through sales of food products.
As well, the seed companies multiplied tens of billions of beans over the years hoping hemp would take off, but acres crashed 95% in just five years leaving them holding the bag; that’s what drives them now to get it approved for animal feed, in order to dump all that stale seed. But we could have used it to jump-start a new domestic hemp food industry, generating revenue and incenting farmers to grow more seed instead of being an expense just sitting in bins for years.
For more information on hempseed food, visit the Hemp Food Association at www.The-HFA.org.