Been seeing a ton of vendors lately claim organic, cGMP, kosher, etc etc. Was wondering if there is an easy way to call these people on thier claims. Im asking mainly b.c. i used to work for a company who had cGMP and organic plastered everywhere on thier social media and site but it was all a sham and neither claims were true. All of these things are pretty easily searchable somewhere I would have to imagine. I’m tryna witch hunt for a day or two and other than cold calling the places to ask what agency certified them and then calling the agency to confirm good standing is there any easier way?
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GMP let alone cGMP is pretty difficult for cannabis right now. Its all about the supply chain also being GMP from my understanding. You can build out a facility to gmp standards but that doesn’t classify you as gmp.
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Can only speak for organic claims but any organic producer should have a certificate or you can search the USDA integrity database.
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If its legit they usually have the certification agency listed, and said certification organization should have a list of all the companies they certified. Some cert orgs are total BS, just pay $2000 and get certified, no inspection. My company has one of those lol. The got another one thats a couple steps above but no way we’d pass a FDA inspection without getting big dings. So yeah, a lot of GMP claims are total bullshit
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For me deciding if a place is GMP means I need to be there, boots on the ground, evaluating their processes to see if they meet the local regulations AND if they can pass my requirements to earn the c in front for “current” best practices.
Yes I look at their accreditation - if you were getting one for being cGMP - I’d expect them to have something akin to ISO 9001 for a solid quality management system, and I’d only be accepting accreditation from places that have a high level of peer approval. That list of accrediting bodies can be found here.
For Organic I 100% agree with @VOS2019 - organic is a standard set by the USDA, you should always be able to look them up and asking them for their ID# should be easy enough for any quality manager to handle. If they don’t have a quality manager, then they are not GMP either - since being cGMP requires a quality manager.
You are not going to find a USDA certificate for MMJ/REC products - because unless something has changed in the last 3 months, the USDA is not giving those out, so you’ll have to look only at hemp companies. So depending on which state you are in - there are state programs you can look at for organic MMJ. I can’t find any that appear to be really off the ground though - so you are probably back to boots on the ground verification. Or you can always have them complete the survey on organic (like this one) and take their words on it. If they have a GMP program with a solid quality program, everything will be written down and they have to be shown to follow it to keep that accreditation.
If you want to know more about boots on the ground HMU. We can talk through being an auditor, what to look for, and how to document what you have seen to help them with their continuous improvement and get that warm and fuzzy feeling that everything is going to be okay.
It helps to understand why you want things to be Organic - everyone should always aspire to be GMP.
Let us know what you find. 
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There’s a huge amount of work that has to be done. But simply put it’s all about documentation.
Process documentation, creating a structured equipment lifecycle, logical and organized batch records, PM records, logbooks, validation documents, commissioning and requirements matrices, quality control and assurance policies…
The difficulty is not necessarily creating these individual documents, but ensuring they all work together harmoniously you’ve got a GMP framework.
I can elaborate more, but doing it on my phone would take hours.
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Here is the UL/cGMP database that you can look up companies and products (AgTonik’s parent company and products are in there!)
https://productiq.ulprospector.com/en/search
EDIT: That is the abridged version. To get the full version, you might have to create an account:
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For starters check to see if the products have lot and batch numbers. Ideally they link those to public lab test data. If not, they’re blowing smoke.
So technically there’s no such thing as being cGMP certified using hemp in ANY fashion. However you CAN have a facility cGMP certified for food, nutraceuticals etc but it’s a practice in regards to hemp or cannabis because there’s nothing put together by the FDA that pertains to cannabinoid production specifically.
As far as being “organic” you can go the the USDA’s integrity database and type in the company and find out. Here’s the links to mine for reference.
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We are doing our 21 CFR (multiple parts) audit prep right now. While getting the cert is expensive and challenging, maintaining a QMS is surprisingly expensive with all of the testing and required processes (air quality, water, calibrations, CAPA, etc.). I’m very skeptical of all the “GMP” CBD companies… it doesn’t seem feasible that all of these companies can afford to actually be GMP and audited by a 3rd party.
Companies should easily be able to provide their audit report or cert if you ask. You can verify with the company that did the audit too.
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