Poland’s highest administrative court has ruled against the country’s main public health agency and affirmed the legality of unprocessed products made from the hemp plant’s flowers and leaves.
In doing so, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that Poland’s Chief Sanitary Inspectorate (GIS) wrongly ordered off the market capsules filled with ground-up hemp plant tops introduced by hemp company Kombinat Konopny in 2019.
“The judgment that was passed is probably the first case in Poland – or in Europe – in which the court did not limit itself to mindlessly rewriting the position of the authorities, but acquainted itself with the case in a matter-of-fact manner,” said Maciej Kowalski, Kombinat Konopny’s CEO.
“Officials who have deliberately abused, concealed and misrepresented will now be held personally responsible,” Kowalski said.
Flawed interpretation
While affirming that flower-based extracts such as CBD fall under EU food safety rules, the court said the GIS interpretation of those rules was flawed regarding plant tops in their raw state, and cited the agency for gross procedural errors in its sanctioning of Kombinat Konopny.
When the company was ordered to remove the product, “Zioła na Dobry Nastrój” (“Herbs for a Good Mood”) from the market in 2019, Kombinat Konopny immediately took GIS to court instead of simply defending itself against the agency’s ruling, a common course of action by companies charged with GIS violations.
While a first ruling in the case by a provincial administrative court in Warsaw dismissed Kombinat Konopny’s complaint, the company’s appeal eventually led the high court to issue a detailed 30-page decision against GIS – a ruling that is final.
Ignoring the evidence
Foods that do not have a record of having been consumed in the European Union before May 15, 1997 are subject to strict rules and onerous food safety tests in order to be placed on the market, under a regulation on “novel” – or new – foods put in place that year.
“(GIS) first misinterpreted the provisions of the Novel Food Regulation . . . and then carried out incomplete and minimized evidentiary proceedings, ignoring documentary evidence submitted by the applicant, as well as evidence produced by the authority itself and known to it ex officio,” the court wrote in the decision.
Read more at https://hemptoday.net/polish-high-court-rules-against-health-officials-clearing-hemp-flowers-as-food/
