The FSA Updated Its CBD Guidance. The Register It Points To Is Dated April.
The Food Standards Agency's cannabidiol guidance was updated on 28 August, adding a section on consultation requests for novel food status. The public register of listed products carries a last-updated date of 13 April 2026.
By Staff, CBD Wire
The Food Standards Agency updated its cannabidiol guidance on 28 August. As of this writing it still states that there are currently no CBD extracts or isolates that have been authorised as novel foods. What moved is the process around it.
What the change note says
Per the change note on the updated guidance, the FSA has added a section on consultation requests for novel food status, advising when a business should submit one before bringing a product to market. It has also clarified the novel-food status of hemp-derived products, reorganising them into separate non-novel and novel sections.
The note is candid about why: those changes had not been made on GOV.UK, but were present on the FSA’s previous website. The agency moved its content across on 25 June; the old food.gov.uk business-guidance address now redirects here.
A business unsure whether its food is novel must submit a consultation request — an Article 4 request — before going to market, with evidence of the history of consumption. Hemp seed, hemp seed oil and water infusions of hemp leaves without the flowering and fruiting tops stay on the non-novel side.
One scope note: the guidance applies to England and Wales. Scotland sits with Food Standards Scotland; Northern Ireland’s consultation requests are assessed by the European Commission.
The register it sends you to
That guidance sends businesses to the register of CBD products linked to novel food applications, which anyone can search. As of this writing, the register states it was last updated on 13 April 2026. The guidance says the FSA will only update the list to support consumer safety, and that it will be updated every four months, or when major changes are required. The register’s own page says only that it is updated regularly.
Reading the three statuses
The register marks entries Validated, Awaiting evidence, or Removed. Per the FSA, enforcement decisions remain with enforcement authorities; the agency has recommended to local authorities that products marked Validated or Awaiting evidence may stay on the market in England and Wales, pending further consideration. Anything marked Removed, or absent altogether, must be withdrawn.
That is a rule aimed at sellers, not at a bottle already in a cupboard. And the register’s own disclaimer is blunter than most brand marketing: the FSA “is not endorsing the sale of any CBD food products”, listed or not. Search the product, not the brand — the list works at product level, and our explainer on the 1mg rule walks through the check.
Find your product, note the status beside it, and read 13 April as the date that status was last updated. Nothing here reclassifies anything. These remain food supplements sold to adults, assessed as food and never as medicine, and what changed on 28 August is the paperwork route in front of sellers, not the shelf in front of you.