WA House RSG - Committee Meeting
(December 5, 2023) - Work Session - Cannabis Laboratory Testing and Pesticides

2023-12-05 - WA House RSG - Committee Meeting - Work Session - Cannabis Laboratory Testing and Pesticides - Takeaways
[ Event Details ]

Lawmakers looked into how funds had been spent to help producers affected by contaminated soil and heard about a potential “service gap” in lab accreditation expected in July 2024.

Here are some observations from the Tuesday December 5th Washington State House Regulated Substances and Gaming Committee (WA House RSG) Committee Meeting.

My top 3 takeaways:

  • After representatives of the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) and the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) gave introductory remarks on cannabis lab testing and a program to address legacy pesticides in an area of central Washington, they faced a number of questions from legislators.
    • A law passed in 2019 defined a timeline to transfer responsibility for lab accreditation from the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) to the Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) by July of 2024. A subsequent law signed in March 2022 required the creation of an interagency coordination team to set lab standards needed in the transfer. Led by WSDA officials, the Cannabis Lab Accreditation Standards Program (CLASP) included representatives of WSLCB and DOH. However, over the summer of 2023, officials at WSDA indicated their agency may be a better fit for cannabis lab accreditation and began crafting an agency request bill. Members of the WSLCB board subsequently voiced hesitancy at shifting responsibility for accreditation again.
    • Late in 2022, a Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) led investigation into the presence of dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE)---a remnant compound of the banned pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT)---which showed the substance above the default action levels in rule of 0.1 parts per million (ppm). On April 6th, an administrative hold was announced which impacted “18 licensees in the geographical area” within Okanogan County, specifically in and around the City of Brewster. In addition to product recalls for some of the licensees, on May 17th lawmakers approved a capital budget appropriation of $5 million from the Model Toxics Control Capital Account for a Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) pilot program “located in Okanogan county to remediate soil contaminated with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and DDT remnants.”
      • Additionally, $200,000 in grants for soil remediation was included as part of SB 5693, the 2023 operating budget. On June 29th, WSDA Director Derek Sandison, sent the legislature a report explaining there had been three grant applicants and “WSDA divided the sum equally between each of the three licensees, for a total of $66,666.66 awarded to each.” As it was expected to take “between three and eight months to grow a cannabis plant, and then subsequently more time to sample and test that plant, the WSDA does not have any data on the efficacy of the grant money in reducing the levels of soil contamination at this time.” But he asserted, “the grants have been effective in relieving some of the economic burden experienced by farmers who are currently experimenting with adding soil to reduce contamination levels on their farms.”
      • On June 7th, WSLCB leadership discussed updates on the topic, released an interactive heat map of cannabis pesticide results, denied a petition related to modifying the action level of DDE, and then heard comments by Cannabis Observer Founder Gregory Foster urging them to look at using hemp plants for soil remediation.
      • On November 20th, a request from DOE showed the department was “looking to hire a qualified Environmental Consultant to conduct a Feasibility Study (FS) to develop and evaluate cleanup action alternatives for pesticide contaminated soils.” Then on December 1st, DOE staff responsible for the soil remediation pilot program published a preliminary legislative report that mentioned their finalizing an agreement with Washington State University (WSU) to study bioremediation using cannabis plants.
    • During the hearing, DOH Deputy Director of Drug Systems Shannon Angell acknowledged the basics of the program and the role the department had in standards for compliant medical cannabis products, consultant certification, and administering the patient authorization database. She mentioned how DOH staff were also working as part of CLASP including “ three FTEs [full time equivalent] and staff that have been allotted to the team.” They’d hired a Chemist and Microbiologist, she told committee members, and an Epidemiologist was expected to be hired “at the beginning of next year.” The CLASP team was “ready to move forward,” meeting weekly with WSLCB and WSDA representatives “to collaborate on rulemaking,” a manual under development, and other issues, reported Angell. She said they also met directly with partner agency officials to provide “information, as well as bring in the Department of Health medical cannabis perspective” (audio - 2m, Video - TVW, presentation).
    • WSDA Legislative Liaison and Policy Advisor Kelly McLain stated that four divisions of the Department were involved in “everything from cannabis infused edibles work, in partnership with the [WSLCB], pesticide regulations and fertilizer regulations on site at grow operations…the hemp production and processing which you’ll hear about today, and then the cannabis lab standards work.” She felt that “we've got seven years of coordinated support with LCB and DOH on both the medical cannabis program, and the recreational cannabis work that's happening in Washington state” (audio - 1m, Video - TVW).
    • WSDA Cannabis Manager Trecia Ehrlich delved into remediation funds in SB 5693. She indicated, “we received $200,000 to distribute to farmers that were impacted by DDT metabolites in their soil. We sent out application forms to the 18 impacted licenses and in turn, we received three applications back from farmers who were looking to amend their soil to reduce the amount of contamination on their land.” While the amount didn’t cover all the growers reported costs, “we were able to divide the sum evenly across the three farmers to distribute those funds for soil reimbursements and the labor associated with that soil” (audio - 5m, Video - TVW)
      • Looking at the cooperation on CLASP work, Ehrlich noted that WSDA had hired “a Supervising Chemist, another Lead Chemist, and a Lead Microbiologist who have developed our cannabis lab standards.” Besides weekly meetings on the issues, she said staff “provide[d] scientific support to the LCB as it relates to defining detectability, and doing their work related to [SB] 5367, and continue to engage in opportunities to support our proficiency testing challenges.” She pointed out that a CR-102 with proposed rules for lab standards was filed on November 22nd, “and we will have our public hearing on December 28th at 11:00am,” with the expectation staff would “finalize the rules before the end of January.”
      • For hemp, Ehrlich said in 2023 there were “47 hemp licensees and of those 47, we conducted 27 inspections.” She compared this to “three years ago, we had 322 licenses, so this is a pretty steep decline.” She remarked how officials had seen that they’d “about halved” the number of hemp licenses each year for several years.
        • Testimony on SB 5367 from WSDA officials on March 13th predicted changes in the bill had the potential to reduce the number of hemp licenses “by as much as 90%.”
      • “Of the 27 inspections that we had, five farms had hot hemp on them,” which Ehrlich identified as “hemp that tests greater than 0.3% THC, which shows us that…a reasonable portion of our licenses still struggle to find compliant seeds.” She did anticipate “a minor increase in the number of licenses” once SB 5367 rules were finalized, rationalizing that “we've already gotten just about as low as we can go. Of our 47 licenses a lot of folks are, are licensed because they're engaging in research.” Others “might export their hemp to other states where they're able to sell for ingestible products, but” many licensees had “waited to see how 5367 was going before they got licensed and chose not to license last year already. So I think we've already seen a significant portion of that drop.”
      • Ehrlich commented that licensed cannabis producers and processors would be expected to obtain a hemp license if they planned to directly cultivate plants with “0.3% THC or lower,” as that was part of the plan WSDA officials had filed with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). “Should that market space grow, within the [legal cannabis space] we might see a slight increase” in hemp licenses in 2024, she said. Ehrlich added “we have proposed a study of infrastructure needs in 2024 for climate smart hemp building materials. And as of now, the current Farm Bill was extended through September of 2024, which means there will be no significant immediate policy changes for the hemp program at this time.”
    • Ranking Minority Member Kelly Chambers inquired about DDx remediation, wondering about the costs for the 15 cannabis licensees who hadn’t applied for the grant, specifically asking panelists to “give us an idea of how much it would cost for…their complete remediation” (audio - 2m, Video - TVW).
      • Ehrlich explained that two of the grant applicants had sought $95,000, and the third “significantly more than that,” relating the cost variation to the size of the farm. She brought up that DOE staff might “conduct a study that might be better able to assess how much it actually costs because it's also important to remember that these farmers were essentially guessing how much soil they needed...They might need plastic sheeting or things like that to separate their existing soil from new soil, so they had their own estimates of cost, but it is possible that we'll see changes.”
    • Co-Chair Shelley Kloba, recognized seeds might be at fault for some of the “hot hemp” regulators had found, but wondered how much growing conditions could affect THC content (audio - 2m, Video - TVW)
      • “There were five farms that were hot, but within those farms there were oftentimes multiple lots,” responded Ehrlich. Identifying nine such lots, she said “three to four of them would be what I would consider borderline meaning that they need to be inspected 30 days prior to their anticipated harvest date and that is a date that they give us because we have only 47 licenses.” Acknowledging a “particularly hot summer,” Ehrlich agreed “that did contribute [to] those borderline folks who were at 0.39 or 0.44.” She was confident more standardized commercial hemp seed could help lower THC content, but “we also see that when folks choose a certain percentage of CBD they pretty much end up hot every time.” Once plants had more than one percent, Ehrlich asserted, “I think environmental conditions are not related.”
    • Kloba noted that hemp infrastructure had come up during the 2023 legislative session, and elected officials had an interest “matching up the manufacturers who want to use hemp as a raw product with the producer or the processors in that intermediate step.” She asked for any additional information on the “vision” for the WSDA study, or “are you possibly doing something up in Snohomish County? We have a sustainable…airplane fuels initiative, and one of the potential suppliers is a hemp grower” (audio - 1m, Video - TVW).
      • Although wanting to see that aspect of the hemp sector grow in the state, Ehrlich cautioned, “because we have such a small community of hemp growers, we're limited in what we can get exposed to and fully understand.” Her hope was for their infrastructure study to be “able to investigate all of the climate smart solutions that Washington State could utilize with hemp.”
    • Representative Kevin Waters observed that one reason why the DDx response had been so robust was that “We got lucky that we were still in session. What can we do as a body to help give these farmers the tools, or you guys the tools to help” when lawmakers weren’t gathered to “answer an emergency situation” (audio - 3m, Video - TVW).
      • McLain replied “there is some very interesting work happening in the…global hemp research space both at Oregon State University (OSU) and at Washington State University that I think will help us with some of this work.” She then mentioned how DOE presenters may be able to speak to the use of funding their department received. McLain believed the problem identified by Waters was “always going to be a struggle,” but “there's some interest in doing that in other spaces as well and you'll probably hear about that from, from our agency this session.” She added that “the majority of the land in Washington State that is high quality agricultural land is in agricultural production for…dollar value crops like apples and wine grapes” while lands “available both for hemp and for high-THC cannabis has been what I would call more marginal ground or historic agricultural ground” and “almost all of that is going to have some level of contamination.” McLain stated the farms impacted by DDx were “not going to be the end of where we see this problem. We see it anywhere that historical agricultural activities have occurred.”
    • Waters wondered how the 0.3% THC level had been established (audio - 1m, Video - TVW).
      • Ehrlich indicated it had been established by the US Congress, and that Washington State agencies had gone with that level to meet federal requirements for a state-level hemp plan. “There are a variety of discussions in this next Farm Bill of 2024 about increasing that threshold to 0.7 or one percent, but it is not clear if that will be adopted by the USDA,” she noted.
    • Co-Chair Sharon Wylie was curious how other states managed hemp production and if states were sharing information on the plant (audio - 2m, Video - TVW).
      • “Unfortunately, we've seen a decrease in hemp across the United States,” Ehrlich told lawmakers, to “about 20,000 acres planted across the entire United States in 2023,” and other state programs had experienced “big licensing reductions.” She said she spoke with her counterparts in other states on “about a bimonthly basis to kind of discuss possibilities for the future” and policies varied between jurisdictions. When Wylie asked if the THC threshold differed in other states Ehrlich answered that it didn’t as it was a federal threshold.
    • McLain offered additional details on the infrastructure needs assessment, stating that WSDA leaders were planning to request more funding for the study in 2024. She then mentioned the agency request bill to take over responsibility for cannabis lab accreditation from DOE, remarking it “just crosses ‘Ecology’ out and replaces it with ‘Agriculture,’ and it does not change the date in which lab accreditation would occur.” Instead of delaying, McLain asserted staff would “be using [DOE gathered] information and those resources, but our staff would be doing that work and then maintaining the lab accreditation program as well” (audio - 2m, Video - TVW).
      • Kloba asked whether WSDA staff handled accreditation for other kinds of labs. McLain said, “staff that we hired to do the lab analysis standards or the CLASP program, many of them have experience in accreditation and quality assurance in existing private and public labs, including our…pesticide hops and cannabis lab research space in Yakima.” She mentioned how WSDA had “accredited lab spaces across the state” for other commodities (audio - 1m, Video - TVW).
  • Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) leadership shared updates on cannabis lab accreditation and contaminated soil remediation—including a willingness to let WSDA take on the former responsibility—before taking questions from the committee.
    • DOE Director of Government Relations Adam Eitmann reviewed the 2019 law directing DOE to assume responsibility for accreditation by July 2024. He mentioned the law establishing the Cannabis Science Task Force, whose two reports contributed to a second bill passed in 2022 related to the authority transfer. Between June and July 2023, DOE officials opened a rulemaking project and published draft conceptual rules, and Eitmann expected they would have a CR-102 ready by March of 2024. He said, “thus far, we've heard concerns about the cost of the lab accreditation and the requirement for cannabis-based proficiency testing [PT] where they are not available, and based on those concerns, we've…made some changes that include a reduction in costs as much as possible as well as a waiver process” (audio - 7m,  Video - TVW, presentation).
      • Eitmann testified that DOE leaders were “aware of the [WSDA]'s proposed legislation, and we would be supportive of that.” There were several “remaining challenges to implementing” the existing laws that he noted:
        • “One, there will be a service gap in laboratory accreditation services as we currently have it on July one” of 2024. Staying compliant with testing requirements in RCW 69.50.348 would not be possible as cannabis labs would have to “apply for and demonstrate that they can meet those requirements.”
        • “Number two, funding in 2022, the [20]23-25 operating budget, included a maintenance level reduction for Ecology which removed appropriation from the Dedicated Cannabis Account” which made it “challenging for Ecology to meet the current statutory requirements to implement lab accreditation.”
          • The only cannabis-specific spending for DOE identified when the operating budget passed on March of 2022 was on page 511 in Section 302, and showed the department was set to receive additional money from the DCA, going from $270,000 to $284,000 in FY 2022, and from $276,000 to $290,000 for FY 2023.
        • Finally, “we are not currently aware of any cannabis based proficiency testing available to cannabis labs in Washington State.”
      • Addressing $5 million in DDx soil remediation funds approved in the 2023 capital budget which DOE leaders were also overseeing, Eitmann noted the money was specifically earmarked for Okanogan County, and that DOE was required to give updates in December of 2023 and 2024.
        • “The first step [was] to identify safe soil levels. It's clear that cannabis plants uptake DDT more than other plants. However, not much else is known.” DOE staff were preparing a study that “will attempt to give us an idea of the link between DDT levels in the soil and DDT levels in plants.” A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was being written between the department and WSU, which had long been a “great partnership.” University researchers had “extensive expertise in dealing with crops and pesticides” and would “collect long-term data from the soil and cannabis plants and farms in Okanogan County and compare rates of uptake to those from the soil” with a “long-term goal…to help farmers know appropriate soil levels…that are safe for growing cannabis products. We plan to start this study in early 2024.”
        • DOE officials had begun to explore the “most common cleanup options for soil,” inclusive of “mixing of clean soil, bioremediation and other methods” which had been successful in other projects. “We are currently out for bid, and request for proposals on this. Bids are due January 18th, with an anticipated start date on the contract for April of 2024.”
        • Replacing contaminated soil was “the best short-term solution for DDT and soil” and most of the funds were earmarked for working with WSDA colleagues to get “clean soil” to the impacted farmers. “We've put in a contract with the Okanogan Soil Conservation District exploring a partnership to help us administer a grant program for farmers. We anticipate having about $4 million available for this effort” to run the program “and provide updates to farmers and those impacted.”
    • Representative Melanie Morgan wanted to understand where contaminated soil ended up (audio - 2m,  Video - TVW).
      • DOE Toxics Cleanup Program Manager Barry Rogowski, regarded it as “more than likely the excavation is not going to be a viable cost-effective option,” though it was going to be “evaluated in the feasibility study.” Morgan wondered why taxpayers were funding a study that included excavation if officials suspected it was “not feasible…do you have data to back up that it’s not feasible?” Rogowski emphasized that they didn’t, and that was why a study was needed. Instead, he expected that “soil mixing” would be the best approach, but they would explore the feasibility of excavation, mixing, or cultivating cannabis in separate potted soil, along with a “literature review” of bioremediation. Rogowski felt this would address the earlier concern over farmers having “tools for the future” when confronted with contamination by giving them an idea of feasibility or “unit cost.”
    • Representative Kristine Reeves asked whether the study would look at remediation using cannabis plants, “so that [licensees] can continue growing a product that they're very familiar with” (audio - 2m,  Video - TVW)
      • Rogowski knew about the use of ryegrass for remediation, but not cannabis. “The WSU plant uptake study would potentially provide some information about that,” he said, looking into “a 50% mix of soil with contaminated and clean, and then a control…looking at the uptake and actually where the DDT ends up in the plant…that could potentially answer some of the questions that you're asking.” The research would also cover “some harvest technologies” if DDT ended up in a specific part of cannabis plants, then “those could be removed during the processing,” he remarked.
    • Wylie stated, “we've talked a lot about how cannabis is different in that it uptakes toxins that another plant might not…do we know specifically how much, what plants do and don't get affected? Because I know that that's part of what the surprise was, people didn't anticipate that because other plants are able to be grown on that soil” (audio - 2m, Video - TVW).
      • Rogowski hadn’t seen much research on the topic specific to cannabis, but assured committee members they would “maybe be able to answer some questions about if there is a level of soil that's safe to plant crops and what would that level be so that potentially farmers could test their soil and…have an understanding if they had a chance of successful farming on that soil.” He added that this would allow producers to get “clean soil, if we can't find an absolute clean source,” and allow a safe level of residual pesticides.
    • Chambers was curious how the service gap Eitmann mentioned would impact licensees, “and are those licensees aware?” (audio - 4m, Video - TVW)
      • Annette Hoffmann, DOE Environmental Assessment Program Manager and former CSTF lead, called the gap “an unfortunate reality of the pace” of the law transferring accreditation over the course of half a decade. “While we all wanted to believe that was a very quick lightswitch,” she said, “it has proved to be anything but.” Hoffmann described the gap as a circumstance “we’ve just become more aware of recently” as staff moved ahead with the rulemaking project. She argued the statute mentioned by Eitmann, RCW 69.50.348, set “guidelines” and “didn't leave us a lot of room to avoid the service gap.” The “waiver process” DOE leaders envisioned WSLCB implementing to exempt labs from in-matrix PT requirements, Hoffmann said, “might be an avenue to lessen the issues associated with the service gap,” though not remove the gap entirely.
      • Chambers then asked for clarification about the waiver, “and does that mean there's going to be essentially supply chain issues for product going into the stores that, is that going to impact consumers” in the months that followed. Hoffmann deferred to other agencies “because they have a little bit more closer ties to the industry,” hypothesizing that “optimistically” there could be a lab accredited within “three to six months” of the July transfer deadline, but staff needed to be budgeted for and hired at DOE before accreditation could be deployed. She said laboratory staff would need training “to apply for accreditation and then they have to demonstrate that, so that, that doesn't happen in an instant.” Without statutory flexibility, Hoffmann relayed how the waiver process “in our proposed rule doesn't have a lot of, of boundaries to it,” having been created “for the case of proficiency testing if a cannabis based product was not available,” but potentially, “that process could be used more creatively to help us navigate the transition.” She promised to discuss the matter with staff at the partnering agencies.
    • Waters returned to the subject of soil cleanup to comment that he’d had to learn a lot about the topic in short order during the 2023 session, and wondered how “plausible” it would be to use cannabis to remove DDx compounds from soil. “Does it pay to have a program,” he asked, “if someone pops up with a high DDT mark and then we go, ‘hey, plant your crops because it's gonna suck it out of your soil, and we'll pay for that’ crop for the year?” Waters added that as a small businessman “it was devastating listening to those farmers last year” (audio - 2m, Video - TVW).
      • Rogowski agreed plant uptake remediation “was used” in the agricultural field, but he wasn’t certain how effective cannabis would be at it. He felt it was “worth looking into and I think the WSU study could probably provide some answers regarding that, and I think we still have some time to work with them to maybe factor in something like that.” He elaborated that the goal of their partnership “with the Okanogan Conservation District [was to] provide 80% of the funding to bring in actual clean soil.” Grants for the “best short-term option” of clean soil were still preferable, Rogowski reasoned, as plant uptake of DDx could “take several cycles or, or many years to actually be effective.”
    • Kloba inquired, “from a consumer perspective the service gap, would mean that…product wouldn't get tested at all, or it would get tested but not by an accredited lab because all of this process hasn't gone into place?” (audio - 3m,  Video - TVW)
      • Hoffmann said they were talking with WSLCB representatives and had the understanding that the contract with RJ Lee, the third-party vendor administering accreditation for WSLCB, was going to be extended to do lab audits through 2024 or “maybe a bit longer.” However, this wouldn’t be a DOE accreditation, she emphasized.
      • Kloba then asked if a “small trailer bill” modifying deadlines for transition of accreditation authority would help the gap. Hoffmann replied that was one of several options under consideration. Kloba wondered if the waiver discussed could be applied. Hoffmann acknowledged “we didn't put…boundaries on it so there might be some, some ability to explore extremes under a waiver process to handle a transition period.”
    • Representative Greg Cheney observed that other states had labs testing to comparable standards, and asked if it was “possible during this service gap period to have Department of Ecology effectively certify, say, a California lab temporarily while one is stood up here” (audio - 2m, Video - TVW).
      • The difficulty was “the pace and the path” used by an out of state lab, Hoffmann said, finding “some of those other states are accredited” to a different “checklist of practices” by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which she felt didn’t meet “the same level of rigor that Ecology's model does.” They hadn’t looked at accepting other standards on a temporary basis, she commented, but had wanted “a mature Ecology-level model that we've developed for environmental work to, to apply here to provide the highest level of confidence.” She appreciated “the service gap will need some focused attention, so I do appreciate that recognition.”
  • Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Director of Legislative Relations Marc Webster went over “the program of testing that we oversee” as well as imminent “changes under the current law” and potentials “under the proposal that you heard about a little bit” from his WSDA counterparts, before taking a couple clarifying questions (audio - 6m, Video - TVW, presentation).
    • Webster also spoke to the committee about the cannabis social equity program, with Director Will Lukela.
    • Webster went over “three different pathways for cannabis testing, two of them are initiated by us and one of them is initiated by the licensee.”
      • “First is the ongoing, standard, periodic testing, looking at products that say they’re pesticide free, are they actually pesticide free?”
      • “Second are complaints or investigation driven testing where somebody…said ‘hey, there's something on this,’ this particular product.” Both of these pathways involved sending “samples to the WSDA lab in Yakima.”
      • “Third, there's the routine tests that all producer processors have to do to ensure that their products are safe” using “one of the eight accredited private labs for those.”
    • Showing what “the workflow looks like for the ones that we initiate,” Webster described how “cannabis samples that are taken by the LCB. It's an Officer if that's a complaint driven test, or a Compliance Consultant for the kind of periodic random testing.” He displayed some statistics about the number of rests and failures over the previous year when there’d been “about 130 of the ongoing or…standard tests, and almost 290 tests from investigations and complaints.” Failure rates were higher for investigations and complaints, he noted, with standard periodic testing showing samples failing “about five percent on those and…more than a third on those complaint driven ones.” In all, Webster said “a little bit more than a quarter of samples test positive for, test above action limits,” though sometimes samples failed against multiple pesticides.
    • He gave more specific testing results as well as the licensee testing workflow in his presentation, and stated labs had to enter testing results to the Cannabis Central Reporting System (CCRS), with agency officials “looking at that with our chemistry staff as well.” Accredited labs conducted “a couple of thousand tests” in the previous year, “and there's less than 10 failures.” With a pass rate “of well over 99%,” Webster recognized this would be “some of the context for why the legislature has been very interested in looking at accreditation and, and how it might change or improve.”
    • Webster said WSLCB “certifies and enforces” accreditation by RJ Lee staff, and was prepared to pass that on to DOE, where staff word take over certification as WSLCB retained responsibility to enforce their determinations. He suggested, “if you're accredited you have demonstrated that you can find results accurately and to a specific standard, but we know there are some incentives that make not reporting accurate results tempting.” Webster said this wasn’t, “a hypothetical problem, I think you're all aware that this has happened here in Washington.” Webster remarked WSLCB staff had no problem working with “whoever [was] doing the lab accreditation…that's up to you guys to decide.”
    • Kloba asked what accreditation standards were being used currently by RJ Lee, asking if it was like an ISO “checklist.” Webster answered “it's more robust than that” and “based on hemp, so the proficiency testing is in hemp, but it is not a checklist.” He said conversations on in-matrix PTs for cannabis with other state agencies were ongoing: “I think there are paths forward, but we're going to need to continue working with our partners on that” since “you can't transport that across state lines” (audio - 1m, Video - TVW).
    • Waters was curious about any other testing done by accredited labs, “do they do alcohol testing?” Webster said they weren’t accredited to do that, but “they do test for things beyond pesticides…things like mold” or moisture which were “of interest to public safety” (audio - 1m, Video - TVW).

Information Set