Missouri’s cannabis cultivators and manufacturers will start receiving uninvited guests next month: state regulators conducting surprise inspections.
The state’s Department of Health and Senior Services will begin inspecting “final finished goods” for product safety and quality on July 1, according to Columbia TV station KOMU.
Final finished goods are marijuana products in a form that would appear for sale at retail outlets.
The announcement of “round-robin testing” in Missouri follows:
- A string of high-profile recalls, including one instance that led to a manufacturer losing its license.
- Numerous instances of regulators in other states issuing recalls or taking punitive action after marijuana product cleared for sale by state-licensed testing labs was revealed to be mislabeled or contaminated with mold or pesticides in later testing.
According to the Missouri Independent, 82% of the cannabis in the state is tested by one lab.
That lab, identified in public records only as “Lab D,” also has a lower failure rate than competing labs.
The state will start by testing 50 products a month, the Independent reported.
State lawmakers budgeted $2.4 million to do random sampling in the fiscal year that began July 1, 2024.
But most of that funding went unspent as regulators were still fine-tuning testing methods, according to the Independent.
The surprise inspections follow stronger action against companies selling so-called THCA flower under the guise that it’s federally compliant hemp.
According to the Independent, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has warned 18 hemp companies to stop selling the products, which state lawmakers have thus far failed to regulate.
