Industry subcommittee addresses Catch-22 around pesticides, cultivation, and product testing
In its mission to address all needs and facets of the Massachusetts medical and adult-use weed industry, the Cannabis Control Commission has a Cannabis Advisory Board. And among those board members, there are specialty subcommittees focused on: Market Participation, Public Safety and Community Mitigation, Public Health, Research, Cannabis Industry.
The latter met this week, with industry subcommittee Chair Helen Gomez Andrews opening the main discussion on microbial testing standards. The CAB is tasked with researching and recommending policy adjustments, and lab safety, protocols, and tech fall under the purview of this group.
In gathering info from experts, for this week’s meeting the industry subcommittee brought in Dr. Sherman Hom. With more than 50 years of experience in microbiology, he “pivoted to cannabis testing regulations in 2017 and has been involved in this area ever since.” Hom was also the project manager at the first cannabis testing facility in New Jersey supporting the medical program in that state, and in 2021 joined the Beverly, Mass-based Medicinal Genomics as the director of regulatory affairs.
Speaking to the group virtually, Hom said he hopes to “have a national impact and protect public health and ensure consumer safety” in his work. To that end, he spoke about microbial testing and various problems with the current regulations that the subcommittee is impugning. Mostly, he addressed how the state allows for the use of some pesticides in cultivation that it then penalizes cultivators for having present in subsequent product tests.
Hom spoke for more than an hour, so stakeholders should watch the whole video, but we excerpted and parsed some of his larger points below …
On the general “landscape of cannabis microbial testing rules” …
It’s constantly changing, but what we have now I believe is 39 states that either have medical or adult-use cannabis programs, and also Washington DC and four US territories. The vast majority of these jurisdictions have cannabis microbial testing rules. My team tries our best to have a continuous update on the microbial testing rules for each jurisdiction, and that is publicly available on the Medicinal Genomics website.
From 2019 to this spring, my team and I have performed comparative analysis on cannabis microbial testing rules which has also allowed us to do a five-year trend analysis. Of all the US jurisdictions, believe it or not, 21 distinct microbial tests are required by at least one jurisdiction. …
There’s an Association of Public Health Laboratories cannabis group, and I’ve been following the testing rules since approximately 2012. And many states initially required … testing which includes for non-detect pathogenic strains of E. coli, all of the salmonella species, and an enumeration test of total bacteria [and] Total Yeast & Mold Count [TYMC].
On the Total Yeast & Mold Count [TYMC] test …
When I entered the cannabis space and began to examine the microbial testing rules in all jurisdictions, I noted that a very popular test was the [TYMC]. That was essentially from the guidelines of the American Herbal Pharmacopeia. And I said to myself as a biologist—I imagined as a cultivator that I’m really excited and I got my first crop, and I sent my sample to the cannabis testing lab and I received my result and I’m really upset because I know that in Massachusetts, the action level is 10,000 colony-forming units per gram of flower and my result was 11,000.
Whoa, I have exceeded the action level. I open the regulations and I have a consequence. Many states do not allow that cannabis flower to be sold, and it must be diverted to making concentrate, or a few states make you destroy the crop. But as a microbiologist, I have no information that any of these 11,000 types of … mold are human pathogens. It makes absolutely no sense to me [that states require the TYMC test when there are other tests that actually identify dangerous pathogens].
On the rules in Massachusetts …
Focusing on just the state of Massachusetts … The present microbial testing rules are essentially those that were first published in the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia 2014 monograph. … Many states have circled around and reviewed, as your state is doing through this subcommittee, the initial microbial testing rules and discussing possible modifications with various ramifications. …
Initially, in the state of Massachusetts, no pesticides, either chemical or biological, were allowed, and this occurred also in the state of New Jersey. But since, some were allowed, and there was a reversal in the policy.
On the one hand, the state is approving the use of these biopesticides. … On the other hand, they are requiring a total test that enumerates bacteria. And these are living bacteria that one sprays on the surface of the cannabis plant, and so when cannabis cultivator harvests, processes, and cures their flower and submits a sample, there is a very large possibility that the enumeration test—in the state of Massachusetts, for example—may cause the result to exceed the [permissible] level. Which would have grave consequences on the cultivator.
On comparisons to other states …
My team reviewed the regulations and all of the use jurisdictions to identify all of the biopesticides that were allowed for use in cannabis cultivation. We were able to identify 22 states that allowed the use of either bacterial and fungal pesticides where the primary ingredient is a microbial species. Many are commercially available and they are used to control the infestation of pests. Fifty percent of the states are in the same situation as Massachusetts is in, whereby they allow the use of biological pesticides but at the same time they have enumeration [TYMT] tests.
On remediation …
Let’s say that there are human pathogens in … a [cannabis] sample, like aspergillus. … I have 24 peer-reviewed papers that show these aspergillus pathogens cause aspergillosis affiliated with cannabis use. It could be a very severe disease, and there’s been a death even. So you remediate, you don’t see any pathogen that may harm a consumer or medical cannabis patient after remediation, and then [the pathogens] recover, and it’s on the dispensary shelf, and somebody’s going to get sick.
I understand these advocates for using remediation to lower the microbial count, but these advocates should demand that these remediation companies do their homework and be transparent about the effectiveness of their technology. I know one particular cannabis testing lab that I respect greatly and they actually spend their profit to do research and they looked into this. It’s very revealing that there’s some truth to our theoretical findings we found in our Illinois Sun Times investigative report.
On the unique subject …
The complex nature of the cannabis matrix is incredibly different from most food and most pharmaceutical medications, and also I have never inhaled a food nor medication, or burned it, or vaped it. I believe I’ve been a proponent and advocate my entire career to create—not borrow—new testing regulations to protect public health and ensure consumer safety.
