By means of the Combined Resolution from the Quality Health Secretariat and the Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Secretariat No. 31/2023 published on November 29th, 2023, at the Official Gazette (the “Resolution”), Hemp, also known as Cannabis Sativa L. and its derivatives thereof were incorporated into the Argentine Food Code (the “Code”).
Throughout the Resolution Hemp seeds were incorporated to the category “Vegetable Foods” entitling them as “edible seeds”. For this purpose, the Code defined them as those “healthy, clean and well-preserved seeds of different varieties of Cannabis Sativa L. plant species that do not express more than one percent (1%) of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), authorized by the enforcement authority for food use“. Therefore, the seeds shall comply with the following parameters provided by the Resolution:
- They must not contain traces of other parts of the plant.
- They must meet the following characteristics:
- Shall not contain more than 0.5% of damaged seeds.
- Shall be free of alive insects.
- Foreign matter: Shall not contain more than 1%, of which no more than 0.25% shall be mineral material and no more than 0.10% shall be dead insects, fragments, or remains of insects and/or other impurities of animal origin. Foreign matter is deemed as mineral or organic matter (dust, twigs, teguments, seeds of other species, dead insects, fragments or remains of insects and other impurities of animal origin).
The Resolution also included Hemp into the category “Flours, concentrates, isolates and protein derivatives“, defining flour as the one “obtained from the milling of hemp seeds that have been previously authorized on this Code, and that have been subjected to a process for the partial or practically total removal of the oil they contain. According to the level of oil removal, the meal may be classified as partially defatted or defatted. The minimum protein content (N x 6.25) shall be 20% (b.s.).” Likewise, the Code provides the microbiological criteria that the product must contain, which may be found as well on the Resolution.
Finally, Hemp was also incorporated into the section “Fatty foods, food oils” of the Code, being defined as the one “obtained from the different varieties of Cannabis Sativa L. seeds authorized by this Code“.
