By Jerry Hagstrom
DTN Political Correspondent
BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. (DTN) — The Food and Drug Administration’s uncertainty over how to regulate hemp, including warning letters to companies for selling products illegally, has diminished the interest of big companies in hemp food products and ?frozen? processors’ access to capital, the president of GenCanna said Thursday at a Crop Insurance and Reinsurance Bureau seminar on hemp. GenCanna is a Kentucky hemp processor that filed for bankruptcy last week.
?FDA does not have a pathway for accepting something that was an illegal substance,? GenCanna President Steve Bevan told attendees at the CIRB annual meeting.
The crop insurers and the companies that issue reinsurance are interested in hemp because the 2018 farm bill made it legal to grow the non-psychotropic plant related to marijuana, and the USDA’s Risk Management Agency recently approved a hemp crop insurance product.
Clif Parks of AgriLogic Consulting, the College Station, Texas, company that developed the hemp policy, and Ron Conyea, a hemp farmer from Kentucky, also spoke at the conference.
