Intro: Ashwagandha is the ingredient most Indian wellness brands build a UK launch around, and the UK's Food Standards Agency still hasn't decided whether it belongs in a food supplement at all. That's not a stalled process — the Committee on Toxicity discussed a working draft of its ashwagandha safety statement as recently as 8 September 2026, six days before this was written. The review is live and moving. It just hasn't landed anywhere a brand can plan against yet, and several European countries have already restricted the herb while Britain keeps working through it.
What's actually happened, and when
The FSA opened its call for evidence on ashwagandha on 8 July 2024, closing 2 September 2024, after the Committee on Toxicity was asked to determine whether a safe exposure level could be established for food or supplement use. It took until 25 June 2026 for the FSA to publish a summary of what came back: 19 responses in total — 8 from food businesses, 7 from industry bodies, 3 from members of the public, and 1 from a university research team — now with the Committee on Toxicity for review.
That review isn't sitting untouched. The Committee's published meeting agenda for 8 September 2026 lists an ashwagandha item — reserved for now, with a modified version scheduled for publication — consistent with a document that's already been through multiple drafts. The underlying safety concerns being weighed are specific: possible effects on thyroid hormone levels, hypoglycaemic effects, and potential liver toxicity flagged in the literature the Committee is working through. None of that is a verdict. It's evidence the process has real momentum behind it, which matters for how a brand should read the current gap in the rules — as an open question moving toward an answer, not a permanently stalled one.
The restrictions already in place elsewhere in Europe are specific, not a vague gesture toward caution: Denmark banned ashwagandha outright in 2023; Poland has capped it at a 3g daily dosage limit since 2020; the Netherlands, France, Germany and Sweden have issued advisory warnings against use without going as far as a ban. The UK sits apart from all of that — ashwagandha has not been accepted as a Traditional Herbal Registration medicine, but it also hasn't been banned, and India's own long history of use is exactly the kind of evidence a future THR application could draw on if the FSA's review lands in a direction that leaves that door open. The UK's current position isn't caution matching its neighbours; it's a genuinely open question its neighbours have already closed one way or the other.
Why this points at something bigger than one ingredient
The ashwagandha gap is the clearest example of a wider fact most founders miss about the UK: your product doesn't automatically arrive there as a supplement just because it's sold as one in India. A herbal or wellness product lands in one of several regulatory boxes, and the box decides everything after it. It can be a food supplement, governed by food law and the FSA. It can be a traditional herbal medicine, which has to be registered with the MHRA before it can legally be sold as one. Or it can contain an ingredient that's restricted, still under review — like ashwagandha right now — or treated as a novel food needing its own pre-market clearance.
What pushes a product from one box to the next is often just the words on the pack. The MHRA looks at two things: what you claim, and what the product actually does in the body. "Supports immunity," "balances hormones," "relieves stress" — language that's routine on an Indian label — can be read as a medicinal claim and move a supplement into unlicensed-medicine territory, regardless of what the ingredient list actually contains.
The novel-food route deserves its own mention because it catches ingredients that have nothing to do with the ashwagandha-style safety-review process. A food or ingredient with no significant history of consumption in the UK or EU before 1997 needs pre-market novel-food authorisation regardless of how long it's been used in India — a genuinely traditional Ayurvedic ingredient with deep Indian history can still trip this if it simply wasn't part of the pre-1997 European food supply, which is a different and unrelated test from the traditional-use evidence THR asks for. It's worth checking an ingredient against both tests independently rather than assuming a long Indian history clears every UK gate at once.
The THR route, if the product genuinely is a herbal medicine
If a product is genuinely positioned as a herbal medicine rather than a supplement, the route is Traditional Herbal Registration through the MHRA. It needs evidence of 30 years of traditional use, at least 15 of them within the EU or an equivalent-standard jurisdiction, and the MHRA's own guidance puts the assessment timeline at around 210 days. That's a fundamentally different plan from a marketplace listing going live next month — the 210 days runs before a product can be sold as a registered herbal medicine, not while it's already selling.
The whole picture, side by side:
| Route | Regulator | What decides it lands here | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food supplement | FSA | No medicinal claim; ingredient not restricted/under review | Standard food-law compliance |
| Restricted / under-review ingredient | FSA / Committee on Toxicity | Ingredient flagged, like ashwagandha now | Open-ended until a decision publishes |
| Traditional herbal medicine | MHRA | Genuine medicinal positioning, herbal-only actives | ~210 days assessment, needs 30yrs use (15+ in EU) |
| Novel food | FSA | No history of significant EU/UK consumption pre-1997 | Pre-market authorisation required |
Worth settling before you commit to the UK
- Classify the product before you design the label. The same herb, with a different claim, ends up with a different regulator — decide the box first, then build the pack to fit it.
- Check every ingredient against its current UK status, not its Indian one, and check it again close to launch — ashwagandha's status could move at any point now that the Committee's review is active, not stalled.
- Rewrite claims to what UK food law actually permits. Only authorised health claims are allowed on a food supplement, and medicinal-sounding language is exactly where brands get caught out.
- If the product really is a medicine, plan around the THR clock from day one — 210 days is a pre-launch runway, not something to discover after stock has already landed.
The Committee on Toxicity's ashwagandha review isn't stalled — it's on at least a third draft. That's a live process moving toward an answer, and worth checking again close to launch, not a settled fact to plan around today.
This sits alongside the wider food and beverage regulatory picture UK-bound brands already have to navigate — labelling, health claims and novel-food rules that diverge from India's own regime well beyond the ashwagandha question specifically. We answer the classification question before a brand ships stock, on the same import-side and VAT setup every UK entry needs, rather than after a listing gets pulled for a claim nobody flagged. For an ayurveda or wellness range, that question is worth asking product by product, not once for the whole line — the answer for a classic supplement SKU and a therapeutic-positioned one in the same range can genuinely differ.