Missouri cannabis regulators have implemented new rules aimed at cracking down on ‘lab shopping’, meaning labs will soon have to check each other’s work.
‘Lab shopping’ is a practice which sees cannabis producers send their products to multiple labs, selecting the ones which provide the most favourable results.
In a market increasingly dominated by the most potent strains, this practice has become increasingly prevalent, seeing many labs face significant losses to business if they do not guarantee results showing a certain percentage of THC.
Now, according to the Missouri Independent, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services have implemented rules which aim to weed out labs engaging in this practice.
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The state will be able to demand, up to 10 times a year, that licensed testing labs collect samples from their rivals, test them, and send the results to the state to review if there are notable discrepancies in the results.
Despite expected pushback from testing labs who have argued that these rules are ‘unduly burdensome’, these rules came into force on July 30.
Anthony David, owner and COO of Green Precision Analytics Inc., told the publication that that 10 tests a year was “nowhere even close to enough data to know whether someone is an outlier, or whether they’re testing in regulation.”
He added: “Yes, we all want better ways to test. We all want methods that are validated and that everyone can use across the entire United States and testing laboratories. But it’s an obtuse way of thinking for the state to think that they can do it.”
Mr David went on to point out that both Colorado and California require interlab comparisons as part of their proficiency testing, and it hasn’t helped either state address the issues of ‘lab shopping’, raising concerns that this would simply be another unnecessary hurdle.
