Third-party lab reports are included with the majority of CBD products, including CBD tinctures and CBD topicals. Let’s speak about the necessity of third-party lab tests before we get into how to read them. The cannabis industry today is mainly unregulated. This implies that, except for Epidiolex, CBD products are not subjected to FDA scrutiny. To put it another way, the labeling of diverse hemp and CBD products receives very little scrutiny.
For the patient or consumer who merely wants to locate a reputable, safe, and effective product to assist them to find relief from their unique illness, this offers quite a dilemma. A CBD lab report from a third party gives independent confirmation of what’s present in the product you’re purchasing.
What Exactly Is Third-Party Lab testing?
If an unaffiliated laboratory tests a CBD product from a CBD brand to find what is in the product, then you can call it third-party lab testing. Almost all reputable CBD companies send samples to an independent lab for testing after the manufacturing process. They do it for the transparency of their CBD manufacturing process. The samples from each batch are then tested in third-party labs, with the results documented in a report.
Third-party testing serves three goals. The first is to demonstrate to customers that the product has been evaluated not only in-house but also by a third-party lab. The second need is to show that the CBD product is clean and does not contain any pollutants. The final step is to display the cannabinoid and terpene profiles of each product.
What Does Third-Party Testing Look For In A CBD Product?
The first thing a third-party lab test will look for in a CBD product is the amount of CBD present in it. In addition to that, the test will also look for additional cannabinoids, especially THC. Since the federal regulations only allow less than 0.3 % THC in a product, companies need to make CBD products with a THC content of less than 0.3 %.
No one likes to have any pesticides or chemical fertilizers in their CBD products. Third-party lab tests will look for these contaminants in CBD products because the hemp plant can absorb them easily from the soil and they may end up in the final product. In addition to that, the lab test will also look for the presence of any microbes in the product.