Politics
Missouri Official Says New Marijuana Testing Protocol Shouldn’t Disrupt Businesses
“The supply chain will remain intact. You’ll be able to move that material in and out freely, and you should do so.”
By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent
The head of Missouri’s cannabis testing unit said the new unannounced visits to collect product samples shouldn’t impact business, in a podcast by the Missouri Cannabis Regulation Division.
“This is going to be just another arm of compliance, guys,” said Ryan Bernard, the division’s testing and research unit manager. “So keep this business as usual 100 percent of the time.”
On July 1, cannabis regulators began arriving unannounced at licensed cultivation and manufacturing facilities to collect products off the shelves. They’ll take them to the Missouri State Public Health Reference Laboratory to be tested for things like mold, pesticides and a whole range of other things.
Bernard said the process will not disrupt production, and it will be paid for by “either by DCR’s budget or state public health lab’s budget.”
“The supply chain will remain intact,” he said, “You’ll be able to move that material in and out freely, and you should do so.”
His team is looking to sample four to seven grams of final finished marijuana goods. If a package has more than four to seven grams, he said then they’ll take the whole package.
“I just want to reiterate that it’s going to start as one tag per facility, meaning that we’re not looking to take 10 tags from a single facility,” Bernard said. “Then as the infrastructure is developed at the state public health lab, we’ll slowly start increasing that out.”
Bernard said he’ll be randomly selecting based on the inventory listed in the state’s seed-to-sale tracking system called Metrc.
“If it’s today, I would go into our seed-to-sale system, pull your inventory down and then just randomly select a sample to come to your facility to take,” he said.
If a product fails at the reference lab, he said his team will return to the facility to collect a “full representative sample.”
“If that product fails at that point, we’re going to initiate an investigation,” he said. “If the material is no longer available at the originating facility, at that point, we may sample from dispensaries.”
Like most states, all testing of Missouri cannabis products occurs at private labs that have been licensed by the state. This is the division’s first attempt to double check the work of licensed testing labs tasked with ensuring the safety of Missouri marijuana products.
Lawmakers began allocating money for this kind of sampling to be tested at the state laboratory in the fiscal year that began on July 1, 2024 with $3.8 million. Most of it went unspent because the cannabis testing methods were “still in the process of being implemented,” according to state budget documents. Another $2.4 million was allocated for the current fiscal year, and it’s unclear how much of it has been spent.
States across the nation are taking similar proactive steps to establish reference laboratories to verify private laboratory cannabis testing, according to the division’s July press release announcing the testing.
“This reference lab will be a pivotal step forward in the evolution of reliable, science-based cannabis testing protocols,” said Amy Moore, the division’s director. “We are grateful for all the expertise and collaboration from many state and national partners, especially from the Missouri State Public Health Laboratory, that helped launch this initiative for Missouri.”
This story was first published by Missouri Independent.
