Manitoba Harvest enters ‘wild, wild west’ CBD market in U.S.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/05/2019 (2331 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hemp foods producer Manitoba Harvest unveiled a new line of hemp-derived products containing cannabidiol (CBD) on Friday, but those products will only be available to consumers in the U.S. for now.

Dubbed “Broad Spectrum Hemp Extract,” the new products include protein powders, flavoured and unflavoured oil drops, oral sprays and soft-gel capsules containing varying amounts of CBD, a non-intoxicating chemical compound that can be extracted from certain cannabis plants, including some types of hemp. The plant-derived compound has quickly gained worldwide attention in light of its possible therapeutic uses, especially in the treatment of certain seizure disorders. But CBD is quickly being added to a wide variety of trendy food products, especially in the U.S.

(On Thursday, Ben & Jerry’s announced its intention to produce CBD-infused ice cream.)

The CBD products from Manitoba Harvest are in direct response to consumer demand and will be sold in natural-health stores across the U.S., Manitoba Harvest CEO Bill Chiasson said in an interview Thursday. He described the current U.S. market for CBD products as “a wild, wild west,” but said Manitoba Harvest has unilaterally affirmed that its CBD products meet a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designation known as “GRAS,” which stands for “Generally Recognized as Safe.”

Achieving that standard involved extensive research and review by third-party toxicologists and others, Chiasson said, as well as preparing a formal dossier of research, testing and analysis performed on the new products. The products are being touted as almost completely free of THC, containing less than 0.01 per cent of the intoxicating chemical compound that’s primarily responsible for getting cannabis users high.

(Hemp, a variety of cannabis grown for food and industrial purposes, is bred to contain low levels of THC.)

“For example, we’re going to be offering a bottle of soft-gel capsules — you could take the whole bottle, and there’s no positive testing for THC and no risk of that at all,” Chiasson said.

Getting the FDA to formally designate Manitoba Harvest’s CBD products as GRAS could take years, Chiasson said, but discussions have already started.

Last December, the U.S. regulator gave a thumbs-up to Manitoba Harvest’s core, non-CBD hemp food products — hulled hemp seeds, hemp seed protein powder and hemp seed oil — saying it didn’t have any questions about the company’s conclusion that the foods meet the GRAS standard.

Chiasson said the new line of CBD products for the U.S. market will be derived from hemp grown in Oregon.

The finished products will be targeted at the company’s core customer demographic: health-focused consumers who want natural products.

But it’s not clear when Manitoba Harvest might offer CBD-infused products at home in Canada. Federal cannabis regulator Health Canada treats CBD “no different than a THC product,” which are strictly controlled, Chiasson said.

“I’m hopeful that regulatory environment will start looking at the U.S. and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, these are good products, they’re natural products, they’re safe products and we need to find a way to make them widely available to our consumers,’” he said. “But I’ve given up a long time ago predicting how governments behave.”

Manitoba Harvest was acquired in February by Tilray, a British Columbia-based legal cannabis producer.

Tilray, which is publicly traded, is mostly owned by Privateer Holdings, a Seattle-based private equity firm with a variety of cannabis-industry assets.

“They have been investing very aggressively in us, to help us expand even more — not just in CBD, although CBD is a big piece of it, but also in our core food products and other new products that are being introduced as well,” Chiasson said.

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sol_israel