Cannabis Compliance Strategy
Implementing compliance standards across every area of your business is fundamental to success. A comprehensive product compliance system is key to establishing the right Corporate Culture, Training, and Quality. It is also about an organizational focus on sustainable profits.
Putting in place a product compliance system for your cannabis operation is not dissimilar to the systems that highly successful operators in the food and beverage industries have adhered to for decades. People point to McDonald’s training as a shining example of a comprehensive training program, but it’s also a compliance system. Everyone in the company learns how to do things, and how to handle situations. Murphy’s Law states: “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” But having proper training and a compliance system in place means that you and your team will know exactly what needs to be done when anything goes awry. This also means that mistakes are corrected before they become a problem.
At its most basic, a proper compliance system means you and your team eliminate self-inflicted wounds at each step of production, right until the product is consumed.
An effective compliance system is implemented company-wide and becomes a corporate culture. It is not just for growers or lab operators. It is a system where everyone understands how they interrelate and support each other. It fosters teamwork and maximizes efficiencies. A well-developed product compliance system results in higher quality products and profits.
Product Compliance is foundational to success
One of these days and likely without warning, the FDA will get involved in the cannabis industry and a lot of businesses will be unprepared and risk disappearing. The FDA will not care about state standards, they have established national standards for all consumables that they will use. It’s arrogant, and putting your entire business at risk to think that the FDA will care about state regulations:
As happens with every consumables product, there will come a time when a tainted product will hit the market on a large scale. As long as federal legalization doesn’t occur, this is more likely to happen sooner rather than later. While it’s more likely to happen via an illicit/black market cannabis product, or in a state where legalization hasn’t happened yet, it could happen anywhere. When it happens, every company in every state will come under immediate scrutiny. Hopefully, the problem will be something minor such as a mouldy product that just tastes bad or makes people slightly ill, but it could be much much worse. There will be a response and questions as to why every other consumable product has to meet FDA standards, but not cannabis. Overnight, businesses will be scrutinized and the cannabis companies that do not meet the standards that the FDA considers appropriate will be immediately shut down. State standards don’t equate to FDA standards, so these won’t offer protection.
The only way to survive is to be prepared. Strong compliance systems and independent certifications are your best defence. A full-service compliance review will look at your established systems or will work with your team to build a system that will meet the requirements for certification by the world’s leading independent authorities.