SC Labs is excited to serve the cannabis industry in California and Oregon and have made the testing process easy to get started: email info@sclabs.com or call (866) 435-0709 to start testing today!

SC Laboratories offers all of our tests in either a regulatory compliant test panel, or as single tests via our R&D testing program.

Regulatory compliant tests:

• Intended to meet the testing requirements for cannabis or cannabis products as required by the BCC (California) or the OLCC (Oregon)
• Can only be purchased as a panel of tests
• Must have results reported to individual states’ track and trace system, Metrc, where they may be used to validate or disqualify batches as eligible for market
• Require cannabis sampling to be performed by laboratory personnel

R&D or QA/QC tests:

• Limited to internal use by producers, manufacturers, distributors, patients, etc.* to improve their products/processes
• Are not reported to the state, and are not associated with batches
• Utilize a smaller sample-size
• Includes the same tests used for regulatory compliance testing, but can be purchased a la carte
• Do not require SC Labs to perform the sampling
• California requires cannabis samples to be collected from a licensee’s premises by lab sampler/courier, or be delivered to licensed lab testing facility by an employee of the licensee (this does not pertain to products derived from hemp)

Both regulatory compliant and R&D testing rules vary by state, so please speak with your customer service representative for more information.

Under current California Bureau of Cannabis Control Emergency Regulation Text (11/16/2017), all regulatory compliant test samples in California must be taken by an employee of the testing laboratory using validated methods to ensure that the sample is representative of the larger batch.

Under current Business and Professions Code (BPC) 26104 and specific to QA/QC or R&D testing for cannabis (not hemp), all samples submitted to the testing laboratory by licensees must either be collected from the distributer’s premises by the lab sampler/courier, or be delivered to the licensed lab facility by an employee of the licensee.

In Oregon, an agent of the testing laboratory must also perform the sampling for regulatory compliant tests, however, the producer may bring the batch to the laboratory for sampling. SC Labs’ well-trained staff of professional field technicians can collect your cannabis sample throughout Oregon and California and will make sampling an efficient and enjoyable part of your process. Contact your account representative to schedule sampling.

What about customers that have non-regulatory samples to be picked up? We have couriers that cover the Bay Area, Arcata, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, Palm Springs, Inland Empire, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, Santa Ana and High Desert. In Oregon, contact us for information on submitting R&D samples. In California, we are also able to accept samples via certain third-party couriers as well. Your account representative will help you find the most efficient method of getting your samples to the lab.

Under current Business and Professions Code (BPC) 26104 and specific to QA/QC or R&D testing for cannabis (not hemp), all samples submitted to the testing laboratory by licensees must either be collected from the distributer’s premises by the lab sampler/courier, or be delivered to the licensed lab facility by an employee of the licensee.

As a reminder, all regulatory compliant testing must be sampled at your facility by an SC Labs field technician. Please contact your customer service representative to schedule a regulatory compliant sampling.

You can view more detailed instructions on how to prep and ship your samples to us here.

Clients can drop off R&D samples at the lab, or pickup options may be available to you depending on geographic location, please call to make an appointment.

Yes! Weedmaps.com is an important partner of ours and we work very closely with them to make sure the results of our clients’ tests are visible on their weedmaps.com page and to all their potential customers. We also offer the option to automatically link all of your test results to your weedmaps.com menu as soon as the test results are available.

We have changed how we schedule our intake of samples to provide our customers with a more reliable turnaround time even as demand for testing is expected to increase drastically. SC Labs averages under five business days turnaround as the standard with all tests.

Customers who want to use SC Labs “Tested” logo on the packaging of their products must perform and pass full regulatory compliant testing for each batch of product that is bearing the logo. There are no exceptions. Please contact your account representative for more information.

Use of the SC Labs “Tested” logo without express written permission from SC Labs is strictly prohibited. SC Labs makes every effort to ensure that clients whose products bear the SC Labs “Tested” logo adhere to our rules and protocols for use on their products, but hold no warranties or guarantees on any product bearing our logo nor any representations by the manufacturer thereof.

It is also recommended that consumers of cannabis products always request a Certificate of Analysis from the manufacturer, distributor or retailer to ensure that the product has been tested for safety.

We test cannabis flowers, concentrates, leaves, e-liquids/vape oils, crystallized isolates, as well as liquid and solid infused products such as coconut oils, tinctures and edibles. If you need a product tested that does not fall within this list, contact us, it is likely that we can test that too!.

SC Labs offers cannabis testing that satisfies Oregon and California regulatory requirements for cannabis and cannabis products safety testing. We test for cannabinoids, terpenoids, residual pesticides, residual solvents and processing chemicals, microbial impurities, homogeneity, moisture content, mycotoxin, heavy metals, filth and foreign material, and water activity.

With passage of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act in 2016 the State of California will begin requiring safety and dosage testing of both recreational and medical cannabis and cannabis products. Under current Bureau of Cannabis Control Emergency Regulation Text (11/16/2017), the required testing will roll out in three phases starting with Phase I on January 1, 2018 and continuing with Phases II & III beginning in July 2018 and January 2019.

To be compliant with Phase I testing requirements, a producer would need to test each batch of cannabis products for cannabinoid levels, residual solvents and processing chemicals (partial list), residual pesticides (partial list), microbial impurities, moisture content, and homogeneity (multi serving edibles only). All phase one tests were mandatory beginning January 1, 2018.

On July 1, 2018 Phase II begins. In addition to the, now mandatory, Phase I tests, each batch will need to be tested for additional pesticides and residual solvents and processing chemicals as well as receive an inspection for filth and foreign material. In January 2019, the rollout of Phase III adds four more tests; mycotoxins, heavy metals, and water activity will be required tests for all batches. Terpenoids will be a required test when producers make label claims involving terpene content.

The current draft regulations require laboratory personnel to perform representative sampling for all regulatory compliance testing. SC laboratories has leveraged our significant courier network to offer the most extensive sampling program in the business. We can meet your sampling needs where you need us, when you need us!

More information on California regulations can be found at bcc.ca.gov.

Oregon requires ‘usable marijuana’ or the cannabis buds, shake, or trim to be tested for cannabinoids (THC/CBD), pesticides, water activity, and moisture content. Cannabis extracts also need to be tested for residual solvents.

Oregon regulations require independent representative sampling as well. SC Labs can arrange for sampling anywhere in Oregon to meet your testing needs. Please contact your customer service representative to schedule sampling!

More information on Oregon regulations can be found at marijuana.oregon.gov

The limit of detection (LOD) is the lowest concentration of an analyte (the compound you are testing for) that the laboratory can confidently say they have a positive detection. A limit of quantitation (LOQ) is the lowest concentration of an analyte that can be reliably measured by a laboratory. Often an LOD is determined when the signal of a detection of an analyte is a few times stronger than the baseline noise of that instrument whereas an LOQ is typically determined when the signal of the detection stands out much further from the baseline noise.

Under current Bureau of Cannabis Control Emergency Regulation Text (11/16/2017), both residual pesticides and residual solvents and processing chemicals are divided into two categories, Category I and Category II. The Category I pesticides or residual solvents / processing chemicals are those compounds that are deemed especially harmful to either humans or the environment and have much stricter allowable limits than the Category II pesticides or residual solvents / processing chemicals. During the phase-in of mandatory regulatory compliance testing, the state is requiring testing for Category I pesticides and Category II residual solvents and processing chemicals on January 1, 2018 and will require samples to be tested for Category II pesticides and Category I residual solvents and processing chemicals on July 1, 2018.

SC Labs is offering both sets of testing beginning January 1 to allow those customers who would like to prepare for future testing requirements to do so now.

Moisture content or water content is a measure of the quantity of water in a material.

Water activity is a little more complex in concept and is more a measure of the ‘availability’ of that water to support microbial growth. For example, foods with a lot of sugar or salt, like honey or bacon, will often have a comparatively lower water activity despite a higher overall moisture content and will resist spoiling compared to other foods with similar moisture contents.

There are two ways to measure water content: Volumetric water content is a measure of the actual volume or area taken up by water in a solid material. Gravimetric water content is based upon the mass or weight of the water content in a material. One way to measure this value is to weigh a material before and after drying. This ‘loss on drying‘ can be expressed in multiple formats, typically either as a ratio or a percentage representing the portion of the solid sample’s weight that was water. SC Labs, like other cannabis laboratories, uses ‘loss on drying’ to measure cannabis samples.

Water activity is defined as the partial vapor pressure of water in a material (cannabis, food, etc.), divided by the partial vapor pressure of water at the same temperature. Increased water activity values are indicators of increased likelihood of microbiological growth. Water activity values of over 0.7 are generally considered beneficial to support fungal growth while bacteria tend to proliferate at water activities above 0.9. Besides an indication of likeliness to support microbiological growth, water activity gives an indication of a substance, in this case cannabis’, propensity to absorb or release moisture from or to its immediate environment, allowing of use of this information for more precise long-term storage of cannabis products.

SC Labs has chosen to use a technique called quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to satisfy the California regulatory compliance testing requirements for Microbial Impurities. qPCR is a highly-sensitive and discriminatory technique for identifying and quantifying microorganisms. It directly detects and measures DNA (or RNA) of only the specific species of organisms we are looking for. Other techniques, like petrifilm and culture-based methods can be highly susceptible to misidentification of similar organisms that look alike or have similar growth characteristics as the target organisms leading to the potential for false positives. When properly developed, the high selectivity of qPCR greatly reduces the possibility of false compared to other techniques. We have painstakingly selected, developed, and validated, what we believe to be the most reliable microbial impurities assay for E coli, Salmonella, and the required species of aspergillus available to the cannabis market.

SC Labs is proud to have achieved ISO 17025 accreditation at its Santa Cruz, California laboratory in 2017. ISO, or the International Organization for Standardization, based in Geneva, Switzerland is the largest organization and recognized leader in developing international standards for testing labs, manufactured products, agricultural and food safety, consumer products, and healthcare. The ISO 17025 accreditation standard applies directly to testing laboratories including environmental, food, and, now, cannabis laboratories. It prescribes documentation and transparency requirements into most functions in a laboratory, especially quality control systems, test method validation, and customer transparency.

The state of California requires all cannabis laboratories to attain ISO 17025 accreditation eventually. However, SC Labs considered ISO 17025 accreditation vital to ensuring our customers could have the utmost confidence in their test results and our quality control systems. We committed to ISO accreditation long before it was a requirement and obtained 17025 accreditation in 2017 for our cannabinoid assay. In 2020 our California laboratory was accredited for all regulatory/compliance panels as well as our sampling procedure, giving our customers even more peace of mind that their test results from SC Labs will stand up to scrutiny from any regulatory or other third-party entity.

Under current Bureau of Cannabis Control Emergency Regulation Text (11/16/2017) a harvest batch of cannabis flowers can weigh up to 50 pounds. A batch of cannabis products can contain no more than 150,000 units. As such the BCC Emergency Regulations require one regulatory compliant test panel per 50 pounds of cannabis flowers or 150,000 units of a cannabis product at a minimum.

A batch of Usable Marijuana cannot exceed 15 pounds. Manufactured products including: concentrates, extracts and other cannabis products batch sizes are limited to the size of the manufacturer’s production run.

Mycotoxin is an umbrella term used to define toxic compounds produced as secondary metabolites by fungus. There are several types of mycotoxins produced by a wide variety of fungus. Some of the most prolific producers of mycotoxins are some Aspergillus species of fungi, but other common cannabis contaminants like certain species of Fusarium and Penicillium are known producers of mycotoxins. Some mycotoxins that could be of concern to cannabis consumers include aflatoxins (B₁, B₂, G₁, G₂), ochratoxin, citrinin, and fusarium. California regulations will require all batches of cannabis products to be tested for both aflatoxins and ochratoxin beginning January 1, 2019.

Current Bureau of Cannabis Control Emergency Regulation Text (11/16/2017) sets the minimum amount of sample as well as the number of sample increments to be collected for regulatory compliance testing of batches. This ensures that samples are representative of the larger batch. The sample amounts are divided into Harvest Batches for raw flowers and define a sample weight to be collected (see table 1 below) and for all other Cannabis Products, regulations specify the number of packaged units to collect per batch (see table 2 below). For each regulatory compliant batch sampling, the lab is required to collect and test two composite samples. The first sample is used for regulatory compliance and is reported to Metrc (track and trace software), the second sample is a field duplicate sample that must be tested by the lab for quality control purposes.

For R&D testing tests, the amount of sample needed is dictated by the requirements of the laboratory in providing accurate results for that assay. The amount required varies depending on the type of sample and tests required. Please contact your SC Labs account representative for more details.

Table 1

Note 1: Represents 0.35% of Batch Wt.

Table 2

Note 1: Minimum sample amounts vary depending on the tests requested and sample types. Please contact your customer service representative for your specific sample requirements.

Our samplers will arrive with the correct mass/volume of sample to be taken, based on the batch size you provide on your Sample Submission Form.

Oregon specifies the amount of product to be sampled for Compliance Testing as it is 0.5% of a batch of Usable Marijuana. For Concentrates and Extracts and Products, please see OAR 333-007-0360 for sample masses/volumes.

Please contact lab directly for information on product needed for R&D testing

The best way to have something posted to your weedmaps.com menu is to email postings@sclabs.com. Sending your request to this email ensures that your message goes out to our entire Customer Service team, making this the fastest and most efficient way for our team to complete your request.

Please include the following in your message to postings@sclabs.com:

• All WeedMaps ID Numbers including the Master WeedMaps ID (even if this page is not published.)
• The SCL sample ID numbers of the samples you would like posted. Please also include the sample names which correspond to the SCL sample ID numbers. Keep in mind, the sample name that you write on your Sample Submission Form (SSF) will be the sample name that appears for all postings. If the name in our system does not match exactly with your weedmaps.com menu listing, the results will not attach properly and will generate a new item without pricing or image. You can edit these new items on your backend to add pricing. If you have two items on your menu with the same name but different sample types, (ie., Blue Dream-flower, and Blue Dream-wax), the system does not differentiate and the results may attach improperly. Please make sure to create distinct names for each product.

If you are a vendor and you would like to post your results to someone else’s weedmaps.com menu, we need the weedmaps.com ID Number for the page you would like the results to sync to, as well as the SC Labs sample ID numbers you’d like to have posted. Please include your organization / business name as well as the name of the collective / dispensary that is carrying your product in your message to postings@sclabs.com

Your results will be viewable for 30 days on weedmaps.com from the date they are posted. If the results that you are looking to publish are more than 60 days old, please contact SC Labs’ customer service directly to discuss postings restrictions. We do not post results from tests performed more than 60 days prior.