USDA Admits National THC Testing Standards Are Difficult to Formulate

William Richmond, the head of USDA’s Specialty Crops Program, has revealed that the federal regulator is finding it hard to formulate THC testing standards for the entire country. He made this admission while speaking at a hemp industry conference organized by the American Herbal Products Association in Denver last week.

Richmond also stated that the USDA has to adhere to the requirement stipulated in the 2018 Farm Bill to the effect that a testing protocol which uses a reliable method, such as post-decarboxylation testing, has to be included in the national hemp rules written by the federal regulators. Finding those reliable testing methods is proving to be harder than initially thought.

The USDA official could not give conference attendees a timeline of when the agency would release its rules, but he reechoed the promise that those rules would be ready by the time the 2020 planting season comes knocking.

William Richmond was also quick to remind the conference that the rules formulated by the USDA will only become final once those rules are made public and the feedback received is incorporated into the draft rules.

He therefore called on the hemp industry to provide as much feedback as possible about what the agency missed when writing the draft rules so that the final rules can be the best for all concerned.

The big question that has to be answered when a THC testing protocol is being designed is, which version of THC should be tested? Each state or jurisdiction has its own opinion on this matter, and this makes it hard for interstate hemp commerce to take place if what is defined as hemp in one state may not pass the test in another state.

There are fears within the hemp industry that once the federal government, through the USDA, releases its hemp rules, then what the majority of farmers have been growing may not qualify as hemp. This is because the varieties being grown at the moment are abundant in other cannabinoids apart from THC. However, depending on when the test is done, some of those other cannabinoids can be converted into THC during the decarboxylation process.

Richmond tried to reassure the hemp industry actors at the conference that the overriding interest of the USDA is to formulate uniform standards to ease interstate commerce but he would not commit on whether those rules would be hard and prescriptive for the industry or not.

Experts now believe that industry players like TransCanna Holdings Inc. (CSE: TCAN) (FRA: TH8) and VPR Brands LP (OTCQB: VPRB) have no choice but to hope that the rules will not be disruptive to the industry once they are released.

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