With hemp beer, hemp chocolate and hemp oil debuting over the weekend, industry is rushing to bring even more products to consumers as the product is now legal to be sold as food in Australia.

The new regulations came into effect on Sunday after the Federal Government decided low-THC hemp seeds were fit for human consumption.

Up until now, hemp has only been able to be used for industrial and clothing purposes.

Hemp beer

In Western Australia, growers said 'cheers' to the new food industry by launching their unique product, hemp beer.

Grower Chris Blake and brewer Hamish Coates have teamed up to produce hemp beer. ( ABC Rural: Anthony Pancia )

WA grower Chris Blake, who has been working in collaboration with Rocky Ridge brewer Hamish Coates, said they were extremely excited to see how the new industry and their product would be received by consumers.

"Hemp and beer are two passions of mine — being a hemp farmer and loving a good drop — so I thought the combination of the two flavours would work well," he said.

"There's been a lot of positive feedback from initially speaking with people about it, so I think that definitely the doors are going to be open for us."

For Brewer Hamish Coates, the idea to combine hemp and beer initially "raised a few eyebrows".

But he said once toasted and ground, the hemp had interesting flavours of "hazelnut and sesame seed" that complimented the dark ale well.

Mettler farmer Richard Davy is using hemp as a useful summer crop. ( ABC News )

Leaf dropped in labelling

While consumers may be familiar with the cannabis leaf logo associated with hemp clothing and building products, that will not be the case for hemp foods.

One of the restrictions in the code for hemp food growers is that packaging not use an image or representation of any part of the cannabis plant other than the seed.

Mettler farmer Richard Davy holding a jar of hemp seeds. ( ABC Rural: Kit Mochan )

It also must not use the word cannabis.

A Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) spokesperson said it was to avoid any association between hemp and cannabis, the latter with psychoactive properties.

"Ministers were really concerned that there might be marketing that might promote it as having some psychoactive properties, but low-THC has none of that," she said.

"They wanted to set some limits or restrictions in the code, and then legislation, that would prevent it from being represented as being psychoactive."

Victorian growers Simon Allan and James Hood pictured in the middle of Simon's hemp crop. ( ABC Rural: Lily Hoffman )

Hoping industry will grow

Hemp has already been approved for food in the UK, the United States, Canada and many other countries within Europe, and for many Australian growers it has been a long wait.

Grower Lyn Stephenson believes legalising hemp for food with disband stigmas attached. ( ABC Rural: Jessica Davis )

Grower Lyn Stephenson, who farms just outside Kyneton in central Victoria, said this will help disband any stigma about the product and grow the industry.

"This is all about promoting hemp and helping people understand that it's not a drug, and there is no drug component in it," she said.

"It's about creating a market for it so that farmers can grow it.

"Because it is an ecologically sustainable crop as well, because there's a deep root system and that breaks down the soil and it's sown closely together, the leaves drop and mulch and break down into the soil. So it's a really good, rotational crop."

The campaign to legalise the consumption of hemp seeds was led by a small but vocal monitory, but the wider food community is still yet to realise hemp seeds can now be eaten.

Vegan café owner Marco Santos, from The Lost Deli in Adelaide, sold hemp food products yesterday for the first time, but said the average customer was not aware of the reform.

"There hasn’t been as many people knowing about it or reacting to it as I thought there would be, but I think it will get bigger as people learn about the product," he said.

“There is a lot of misinformation and a lot of people also don’t understand the difference between low THC hemp and cannabis.

"So some customers are like 'is this going to do anything to me?' but we said 'no, it’s just a seed'."

A day for celebration

South Australia received two hemp reforms yesterday — with the State Government also finalising the rules farmers who want to grow it need to comply with.

The Industrial Hemp Act 2017 came into effect yesterday, making South Australia the last state to authorise the growing of low THC hemp, almost two decades behind Tasmania.

Teresa Dowling, the founder of the Industrial Hemp Association of South Australia, said the SA industry is expected to have farmgate value of $3 million within five years.

"It is a day for celebration, that's for sure, it was a long road to bring SA up to speed with the rest of the country," she said.

Research trials are by South Australian authorities are underway across the state to test varieties of hemp best suited to local conditions.

The Australian hemp industry is now gearing up for a huge growth in production, with many new crops going into the ground this year.