10/08/2026
Turkey Tail’s Legal Status and the EU Novel Food Directive
I have been approached recently by many people anxious to clarify the situation with Turkey Tail mushroom as they have read it has been banned and are worried they will no longer be able to obtain supplies. Well, yes, sadly, Turkey Tail has been engulfed by EU legislation, yes EU legislation…and you thought we’d left the EU.
Please note: Turkey Tail is still available from qualified herbal practitioners like myself.
The European Novel Food Directive (Regulation (EU) 2015/2283.) is actually a law, meaning it has to be adhered to across all member states of the EU from the time it came into effect.
A novel food is defined as any food/substance that was not used for human consumption to a significant degree within the European Union before May 15, 1997. As if nothing existed before that date! Pretty arbitrary isn’t it? Thank goodness we didn’t discover the potato last week.
So, if it was not in use in Europe as a food before this date it has to be subjected to rigorous safety assessment before it can be sold. This costs a lot of money (some paid to the EU) and time, for the individuals wanting to register it as safe. A nice little earner for the EU.
Obviously, safety of an item falling under this regulation is the most important aspect of its being accepted, and regardless of this directive or not (just like before it existed), we have standard ways to be sure an item is safe for consumption, wherever in the world it is actually consumed and in whatever form it is consumed.
If I want to put such an item onto the market in the EU I have to submit a dossier covering all aspects of its chemical composition, potential toxicity, its potential to be allergenic etc. If it is then accepted by the European Food Standards Authority it is accepted onto the market and anyone can sell it.
This kind of approach is obviously very useful for truly novel foods such as lab grown meat, insect derived food ingredients etc (and some of them have been accepted by the EU). But, how can this be applicable to something like turkey tail that already has a well-documented history and modern scientific research background. Not to mention the fact that it has already been used as a popular supplement in Europe and world-wide for the last 50 years or so. It has been analysed to the last molecule it contains and tested in human beings already. All the safety data already exists. Extracts of turkey tail have been used as registered pharmaceuticals! You couldn’t do this without knowing all about the raw material.
Britain is no longer in the EU of course…but guess what, we still are in this respect, as the Novel Food Directive was simply copied into British law during Brexit. Here in the UK, the British Food Standards Agency are now running it in place of the European Food Standards Agency. In Northern Ireland it is even more strange in that the EU still run the directive there. So, if a “novel” food becomes legal in the EU it is automatically legal in Northern Ireland, but not the rest of the UK. Confused yet?
So, how come this has affected the legal availability of turkey tail mushroom in the UK?
Basically, there is no question regarding the safety, toxicity etc of turkey tail mushroom as it is one of the most researched mushrooms on Earth thanks to its use in Japan and Asia as not just an herbal medicine, but as a licensed drug used in the treatment of cancer. The only issue is that there is no written historical evidence of its use a s a ‘FOOD’ and the EU bureaucratic machinery requires a paper trail of its safe use a food. It is as if the all the scientific research already done on turkey tail does not exist! Did the person responsible for imposing this directive not do their homework, or did they deliberately ignore it?
Obviously, because so much scientific work has been carried out on turkey tail, analysing every chemical it contains, and the effects of those chemicals on humans, animals and cell cultures there should be no need whatsoever to do any more work on proving its safety for humans. It makes you wonder who comes up with these stupid rules and regulations…and why. Obviously therefore, to get it registered as a novel food all you’d have to do is copy all the information already available on it…and pay the bill!
Let’s just take a short while to do what any good European Novel Food Directive executive should have done and examine the historical and modern use of turkey and look for any safety issues that have arisen.
Let’s start with this trial on the potential toxicity of turkey tail mushroom, reported in the Journal, Frontiers of Toxicology, which is based in Sweden. This is the full title of the study.
Kritika Mahadevan, Julie Daoust, Thomas Brendler, Ankit Chaudhary, Alimuddin Saifi, Vipin Kumar Garg: A toxicological assessment of Hericium erinaceus (Lion's mane) and Trametes versicolor (Turkey tail) mushroom powders: Front Toxicol. 2025 Oct 28:7:1651442
The study consisted of attempting to poison/kill rats by feeding them ever increasing amounts of turkey tail powder (and lions mane powder)…all carried out to OECD guidelines. The OECD is the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, an organisation based in Paris with members including most EU states and charged with enhancing business development and setting standards etc.
In summary this study concluded: The results demonstrated that both Organic Lion's Mane M2-102-10 powder and Organic Turkey Tail M2-101-03 powder did not induce acute toxicity, showed no evidence of subchronic oral toxicity in rats at doses up to 2000 mg/kg body weight/day, and exhibited no genotoxicity in either in vitro (in test tubes) or in vivo (live animals, tissues) assays.
There you go then, enough said, thank you very much and goodbye.
Why should we need to go on? Historically speaking, the main history of use comes from Asia, specifically China and Japan where it is called Yun Zhi (cloud mushroom) and Kawaratake (mushroom of the river bank) respectively. The Chinese history of use of turkey tail as a medicine is over two thousand years old. It was used in traditional Chinese medicine as an energy restorative and to treat ‘damp’ conditions. It would generally have been used as a decoction (a tea made by boiling, sometimes referred to as a soup) and was known as a ‘superior’ remedy, enhancing and extending life. This centuries old use in China is mirrored in Japan with its use as a strengthening and immune stimulating agent, helping the body fight off disease.
Strangely, in western Europe mushrooms do not have a great tradition of use in herbal medicine as they do in Asia. However, in Eastern Europe it is very different with a long tradition of using turkey tail to fight off chronic lung infections and to fight cancer and other wasting diseases...but Russia aint in the EU either!
It had been discovered during the 1950’s and 1960’s that mushrooms such as shiitake, turkey tail, reishi etc all contained components called beta-glucans and it was quickly realised that these components are powerful immune stimulants. Certain beta-glucans were purified; lentinan from shiitake, zymosan from yeast cells, PSK and PSP from turkey tail and D-fraction from Maitake are outstanding examples. Lentinan and PSK (also known as Krestin) were quickly adopted as official anti-cancer pharmaceutical agents in Japan and quickly became high grossing medications used in the treatment of certain cancers and as an adjuvant to chemotherapy.
If you then do a basic search to find scientific/clinical papers on the use of various extracts of Turkey Tail on PubMed or Google Scholar for example, you’ll find thousands. These papers are all accepted, properly prepared and presented and cover the effects in the human body, other animals and cell cultures of just about every chemical Turkey Tail contains. You will notice a glaring lack of side-effects, contraindications, toxicity etc. What you will notice on the other hand is the long list of positive health benefits Turkey Tail represents for human beings, with its main actions being on the immune system. Then distilling this information further we find the work on the isolation of PSK and some 30-40 extremely high quality human clinical research papers which eventually lead to PSK’s licensing as an anti-cancer adjuvant drug (aka KRESTIN) in Japan.
So, to find a herbalist near you check www.NIMH.org.uk or give me a ring on 07802408146. See less
