Your customers expect the cannabinoid products you sell to be as safe and potent as the label promises. But what do you tell customers when they ask you what that means?
They want a good answer. This guide will help you provide it. The fact is that all our cannabinoid products, from CBD isolates to THCA joints and Delta-8 edibles, undergo a rigorous amount of testing to ensure safety, potency, and great taste.
In this short guide, you’ll learn all about the lab tests and quality control that cannabinoids go through to earn a spot on your store shelves. You’ll discover what tests are performed, at what stage, what contaminants they exclude, and how the best effects and flavor are carefully preserved.
How Hemp Products are Tested
The quality control process begins long before your hemp ships to you—in fact, it starts before the plant is out of the ground.
To help you better understand where and why these tests take place, we’ve listed them below in the order of the hemp plant’s life cycle. Let’s start by looking at farming.
Farming
Quality control starts when the seeds of hemp plants first enter the ground. We go further than some producers by employing 100% organic farming practices. These practices emphasize the use of natural processes and materials, meaning the plants are grown using fertilizers and pesticides from natural sources.
These practices ensure that when lab testing begins (more on that later), significantly fewer contaminants need to be controlled and removed from the final product.
Processing the Raw Hemp
During processing, the cannabinoids and plants are milled into a coarse powder that will be used to create your customers’ favorite hemp products. Quality control is necessary here to ensure that foreign materials from the machines do not get onto the product.
Our milling process is performed to the highest industry standards based on the FDA’s current Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and the Code of Federal Regulations.
Extraction
During extraction, we separate the cannabinoids and plant matter. This high-tech process ensures that as many desirable cannabinoids as possible are collected.
Our extraction process protects the 100s of cannabinoids that deliver entourage effects. This refers to the possible heightened effects when CBD, CBDA, CBG, CBN, and other cannabinoids are all present and working together.
Our process also protects naturally occurring flavonoids and terpenes that are responsible for delivering great taste.
Refinement
After extraction, hemp products are refined to ensure compliance with U.S. law. The law requires that all hemp products for sale in the US must not exceed the federal hard limit of 0.03% THC by weight.
THC is carefully extracted during this step to ensure that the products are under the federal limit. This step may have different goals depending on the product.
For some products, we focus on delivering the best experience that the legal limit offers. Our gummies, for example, carry the legal limit and still provide an intense THC experience.
However, our process can go further. We refine some products until they carry 0.00% THC for customers who prefer that or in states where the law requires it.
Chromatology is one technology used to ensure that the products you receive are compliant. After this step, the hemp undergoes significantly more testing for safety and purity.
Lab Testing
Lab testing is the most involved step, and it is an important one.
Cannabinoid testing goes beyond potency and profile assessments—it’s a comprehensive process that checks for a spectrum of contaminants that can compromise safety and efficacy. These contaminants can only be removed through rigorous testing.
The following in-house lab tests ensure your customers receive safe, enjoyable cannabinoid products.
Microbial Testing
Assessing the microbial load prevents final products from reaching consumers with harmful levels of microorganisms.
A lot of tiny life forms may be attracted to hemp plants. Our testing removes microbial contaminants such as bacteria, yeast, and mold that can flourish in improper conditions.
Rigorous testing is the frontline defense. It allows us to promptly identify these microorganisms and prevent them from taking advantage of ideal moisture content levels for their growth.
Residual Solvent Analysis
Some cannabinoid extraction methods use solvents that leave behind residues. These residues can pose significant health risks when consumed.
Lead, mercury, cadmium, and other heavy metals can inadvertently find their way into products during cultivation or manufacturing. Residual solvent analysis aids in the identification and quantification of these residues.
Our products are subjected to stringent limits, ensuring consumer safety remains uncompromised. Comprehensive solvent testing scrutinizes all present materials in refined hemp, ensuring that harmful residues are absent entirely.
Mycotoxin Analysis
Molds create harmful substances known as mycotoxins that can endure in a product even after the mold has been killed and removed. We perform mycotoxin analysis to identify and remove any trace remains of these mycotoxins.
Foreign Material Inspection
Visual inspection and microscopic examination of the refined hemp ensure that products are free from foreign particles that could compromise quality control standards and safety.
This kind of testing doesn’t identify a particular material. Instead, it looks for anything that doesn’t belong so that we can remove it. Foreign material inspection may identify contaminants like dust, particles from machines, hairs, or anything else that may slip in before further production.
Liquid Chromatography & Mass Spectrometry
These scientific technologies dive deeply into our products’ composition, revealing the precise concentration of cannabinoids with astonishing precision. This helps to verify that each product aligns with its labeled cannabinoid content).
Third-Party Lab Testing
While we perform our lab testing in-house, all our results are verified through third-party lab testing. We make these reports available to you. For every product we sell, you can view third-party lab tests that closely verify—
- Total cannabinoid content
- Total potential THC content
- Any visual presence of particulates, mold, mildew, and other foreign substances
Explore THD Wholesale’s Quality Control Offerings
At THD Wholesale, comprehensive analytical testing is an important part of our methodology.
We use modern analytical procedures to confirm that the cannabinoid content of our goods matches the labeled information regularly. This method ensures dependability by combining potency testing and quality control assurance.
It’s not only about what we include but also what we leave out. Every solution is examined extensively for impurities that might compromise safety and product quality control. All our hemp farmed in the United States is lab-tested, and the findings are available to our customers on our website. Check out our wholesale selection today. You’re sure to find something to thrill your customers.
