The team says that hemp is having a comeback, which is partly due to the interest in CBD. The study, which was published in Nature Food, found that giving cows hemp with a lot of cannabinoids changed their behaviour and made them sick.
Some of them, like the cows, got sleepy and wobbly on their feet. Researchers say that they also ate less and made less milk.
They also found that even small amounts of hemp caused small amounts of THC to be found in the milk.
Michael Kleinhenz, a veterinarian at Kansas State University, said in an interview with New Scientist that the findings are important because there was no way before to know how much cannabinoids were in the milk of dairy cows.
The study, which started more than 10 years ago, was done on ten dairy cows, and the amount of cannabinoids in their milk, blood plasma, and faeces was measured.
Cows were fed both high and low levels of cannabinoids in hemp. Even when cows ate up to 920 grammes of the weak feed, their health didn’t change in any way that could be measured. The cows ate between 850 and 1680 grammes of the more potent hemp, which was made of leaves, flowers, and stems and had about 0.12% THC.
Researchers found that after the animals ate this feed, their behaviour changed in a big way.
“The cows ate less and made less milk after the second day. Both heart rate and breathing rate slowed down. They also had more saliva, played with their tongues, and their nictitating membranes in their eyes turned red,” they wrote.
Soon after the cows started eating the more potent hemp feed, THC and other cannabinoids were found in the milk.
In some cases, the amount of THC found in the milk was higher than what European food safety regulators say is safe to eat. Researchers also said they didn’t know if it was the THC that caused the drop in milk production or if it was something else in cannabis.
The New York Times says that American hemp growers, who are left with tonnes of hemp biomass after cannabinoid compounds like CBD have been taken out, should think about whether or not THC could get into humans through milk.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Robert Pieper, told the Times, “Hemp is a very useful and versatile crop, but we need to be careful about feeding it to animals that produce food.”
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Researchers from Oregon State University did a study earlier this year to find out if feeding hemp biomass to lambs would hurt the animal or the quality of its meat in any way.
Over a four-week period, the 35 male lambs were fed different amounts of hemp biomass. After that, they went through a four-week “withdrawal” period where hemp was taken out of their feed.
They found that the hemp feed was as nutritious as alfalfa and that the extraction process left behind no mycotoxin, terpenes, or organic residues. They also found that the hemp feed had no effect on blood parameters related to liver health, kidney function, immune status, and inflammation. Also, there was no change in the quality of the meat.
During an industry roundtable in August, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials said that more research is needed about hemp-based feed ingredients and how they might affect animal products that are meant to be eaten by humans, according to Feed Stratey.
