Is it right to trust the certificate provided to 
you by a manufacturer or laboratory? Certificates of Analysis or CoAs are important and provide valuable information about a product, its profile and actual constituents, but many manufacturers take these for granted and as PharmTech.com point out in their article “Certificates of Analysis: Don’t Trust, Verify” many pharmaceutical companies don’t verify their certificates as often or as in depth as they should.
The result is that increasingly often the certificates that come with products or indeed with their APIs are missing key information about provenance and quality assurance. This can lead to assumptions about quality which can not be reasonably inferred and in the end, inferior product reaching the market.
Cannabis quality control systems are in general robust where they exist. High growth markets and consumer demand however can lead to quality shortcuts being taken. In most medicinal markets, GMP or Good Manufacturing Processes are required to ensure quality of material which is to be consumed by patients who are often unwell or at the very least more susceptible to potential hazards in the products which they are consuming. Lack of adherence to GMP can invite bacteria, mould, pesticides or other contaminants into the production chain. Cannabis is known to be an extremely good bio-accumulator which will readily take up the good and the bad from the environment in which it is grown, so often the bad, where it exists, can be magnified many times over.
Vericann has looked over dozens and dozens of cannabis certificates for customers and offers a free* certificate review and verification service to examine certificates provided to end users and will advise whether the product in question meets the requirements of the local jurisdiction in which the material is being purchased.
Registered Vericann users can submit their issued certificate to Vericann for appraisal and we will let you know what information is really there and whether you should trust the information you are receiving.
Specifically we examine:
- Primary cannabinoid testing
- Secondary cannabinoid testing
- Terpene testing
- Test methods utilised
- Pesticide and heavy metal testing
- Test lab certifications (ISO 17025, ISO 9001)
- Local jurisdictional requirements
amongst other things.
We will provide a basic certificate review report but can provide a more comprehensive report for a small fee.
At the end of the day, if you are taking a cannabinoid medicine or even enjoying cannabis in a recreational market, it is key to understand the quality and provenance of the material you are purchasing and consuming. Make sure you understand as much as you can about your product and don’t just trust the outside of the packet marketing, verify the product you are taking and make sure it is what it says it is. Quality is the key.