The Importance of CBD Oil Lab Testing

The CBD industry is highly unregulated – resulting in unethical CBD manufacturers artificially inflating or lying about the CBD content in their products. Other companies are even selling products that may have been contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides, or other harmful ingredients of CBD Oil lab testing.

Finding quality CBD products is a bit of a challenge for even the most informed customers. And this is where third-party CBD oil lab testing comes in. A CBD manufacturer will send a sample of their CBD product for testing to a separate company and this company will run its own tests and provide the results.  

As customers, this practice should increase your trust in the CBD manufacturer, because it’s less likely that a third-party company would lie on their lab tests. And they have a reputation to uphold by providing consistent, accurate testing.

In this blog, we shall discuss the importance of hemp lab testing, and why you should consume only third-party lab-tested CBD.

What is the Importance of CBD oil Lab Testing?

The entire purpose of third-party CBD oil lab testing is to provide an unbiased analysis of CBD products. These tests are used to indicate the quality, purity, and potency of a CBD sample.

Third-party CBD oil lab testing is critical in today’s market. The entire CBD space remains highly unregulated these days – which makes it easy for companies to lie about the quality or potency of their products. Some companies are doing it to shave dollars off their bottom line by sourcing low-quality (even contaminated) hemp. Other companies are exaggerating their cannabinoid profiles to increase sales.

Any good manufacturer knows that an industry full of scammers and false advertising is not going to help them in the long term. If allowed to persist, governments may decide to step in and make processes substantially harder for them down the road.

This is exactly why many manufacturers pay out of their own pockets to have their products tested fairly by an independent lab. These companies will display the lab results for each batch to publicly prove that what they advertise on the bottle is really what you’re going to get! This is a strong indicator of integrity.

But the real question is – what do companies that don’t practice third-party CBD oil lab testing have to hide?

Well, the bottom line is that if you can’t find third-party lab tests public on a company’s website, it’s time to move on to another one.

What do third-party testing companies actually test CBD for?

There are a number of different things a third-party lab can test for. Each test needs to be run individually and will have different costs to run the test. Here are the most common tests run by third-party laboratories on CBD products:

• Cannabinoid profiles

The most common test run by a third-party lab is to test for the cannabinoid profiles. Using specialized testing techniques like high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), the concentration of cannabinoids, including CBD, THC, CBC, CBG, CBN, and others can be quantified. This is used to confirm that the amount of CBD listed on the bottle is accurate.

The cannabinoid profiles are also important to verify the THC content is as advertised.

• Terpene profiles

Terpenes are small, volatile compounds abundant in the plant world. These compounds are responsible for the characteristic smell of the cannabis plant, as well as plenty of other plants including lemons, oranges, roses, tea trees, and pine trees.

Many therapeutic benefits of the cannabis plant rely on the terpenes in the plant. Some improve the absorption of other cannabinoids like CBD, while others offer their own therapeutic benefits towards the muscle relaxant, sedative, stimulating, or anti-nausea effects of CBD products.

Only companies selling CBD products made from full-spectrum extracts will get the terpene content tested by third-party labs. Even among these companies, it’s rare to test for terpenes.

• Heavy metals

Cannabis is a bio-accumulator, which means that it has the ability to pull nutrients out of the soil and concentrate them in its stems and leaves.

Unfortunately, this means it also concentrates harmful compounds from the soil such as heavy metals. If consumed, these compounds can cause inflammation and destruction to cell structures in the body and should be avoided at all costs.

• Organic solvents

Organic solvent testing is becoming less popular these days because most CBD manufacturers are no longer using solvents to extract the cannabinoids from the hemp plant.

Newer technologies like supercritical CO2 are much safer than solvent-based extractions because it doesn’t require the use of toxic solvents to achieve an efficient extraction.

• Biological contaminants

The last item third-party labs will test for is biological contaminants. This includes molds, fungi, parasites, and bacteria that may have infected the plant material.

If contaminated hemp goes through the extraction process, it will contaminate the final product. Biological contaminants may also trigger allergic reactions, or cause direct harm to the end-user.

The importance of purchasing third-party lab-tested CBD

Third-party testing isn’t required from a company to sell its products. Yet, most of the best CBD manufacturers are having it done anyway. This is a great sign of the integrity of the company.

Anybody can buy cheap hemp oils and slap an attractive label on them. They can advertise whatever cannabinoid profiles they want. Nobody is going to follow up with these claims. Unfortunately for the consumer, this means that there are a lot of trash CBD oils on the market. Companies are selling oils with minuscule CBD levels as ‘high potency’, or oils contaminated with molds, bacteria, or heavy metals, which are really harmful to your health.

If a manufacturer does everything it can to create high-quality products, the only way to really prove this and separate themselves from unethical manufacturers is through independent CBD oil lab testing. These companies test for pesticide, solvents, cannabinoid profiles, terpene profiles, and heavy metal contamination.

Get your hands on high-quality, THC-free* hemp products at Califia Gold. We third-party lab test all of our hemp oil, so you can be confident that you’re receiving a safe and effective product, which will help you live a healthier and more relaxed life.

Recommended Read: Why Lab Testing For CBD?

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