A recent Michigan State University grad slips on an arm-length polyethylene glove, the kind worn to inseminate cows.
Wearing a hooded, one-time-use, micro-fiber, full-body suit and face mask, he reaches into a nearly four-foot-tall, corrugated curing tube filled to the brim with marijuana buds at the 170,000-square-foot Common Citizen industrial grow facility in Marshall. Digital numbers on a plastic end cap display the internal temperature and the moisture content.
If too wet or exceedingly hot inside, the tubes could provide the optimal environment for mold, fungus or other potentially harmful contaminants to thrive.
Jayson Butler, 22, two weeks into the job, comes up with a fistful of green marijuana flower and places it in a brown jar on a scale. He reads aloud the weight and goes back in for more.
After a few dips into predetermined but randomly selected sections of the tube, he caps and labels the airtight, amber-colored jar. That one-time-use jar will soon join others in a marine dry bag to be chauffeured to a Lansing laboratory inside a 55-degree, temperature-controlled cooler by way of a white cargo van. The contents will be tested for THC potency, mold and microbials, heavy metals, fungus, pesticides or any other foreign matter.
It’s all part of the heavily regulated process that ensures marijuana sold in stores across Michigan is safe. Any mistake can cost tens of thousands of dollars to producers and present health concerns for consumers.
“With our forensic background, we’ve essentially tried to do the best that we can to train our staff to collect samples like it’s physical evidence from a crime scene and protect it from cross-contamination issues,” said Todd Welch, who retired from a career with the Michigan State Police Forensic Sciences Division before helping found Viridis, one of a dozen licensed marijuana safety compliance lab companies in the state with locations in Lansing and Bay City.
Should a sample become contaminated before reaching the test beakers and petri dishes - for instance due to airborne mold exposure - it could fail Michigan’s stringent barrage of testing. An entire batch of marijuana flower the sample represents, up to 50 pounds, could require destruction.
Jayson Butler of Viridis Laboratories collects cannabis samples, which will later be tested for potency and purity, at Michigan Pure Med in Marshall, on Tuesday, June 8, 2021. (Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)Mike Mulholland | MLive.com
The retail price of marijuana as of April was nearly $4,000 a pound, according to state Marijuana Regulatory Agency data.
At Common Citizen on Tuesday of last week, the 42,500-plant indoor industrial grow presented 15 marijuana-filled cylinders awaiting sample testing that weighed between 10 and 13 pounds each, a total of nearly 195 pounds. State testing rules require testing labs to collect .5% of each batch, in this case up to nearly a pound that the grower will never see again.
Butler, who works for Viridis, said he got into the marijuana industry because he’s interested in cannabis science. He called it an “interesting” job and not one he ever imagine having before Michigan’s marijuana industry began it’s prolific expansion in December 2019.
Welch said sample collectors, known as field technicians, start out at a nearly $40,000-per-year salary and may earn up to $70,000.
Butler works under the supervision of Lead Field Officer Jarrod Knauff, an 11-month veteran with Viridis.
On this day, the duo have collected numerous samples from five different marijuana facilities, arriving at each wheeling a cart topped with a heavy suitcase-like box containing scales and other equipment they’ll need. If all goes well, Knauff said they can be in and out of a facility within a half hour. As they enter sample collection data, it’s relayed in real-time to the labs so they can begin prepping for testing.
Few variables are left to chance and nearly every piece of information is entered into state Marijuana Regulatory Agency’s “seed-to-sale” METRC tracking system, including the name of the field technician who will be driving the sample and the route they’ll take to the lab. The weights are certified by Common Citizen Quarantine Technician Les Sedore, who creates a manifest and chain of custody.
Jorge Lerma, a horticultural scientist with Viridis, recalled a time one of the company transport vans broke down along the side of the road in transit. He had to call the state licensing agency to notify them prior to transferring the samples to another vehicle.
Testing takes up to four and a half days. If product passes all state required testing, the results are submitted to the Marijuana Regulatory Agency. From there, Common Citizen Chief Cannabis Officer Chad Zaki, who previously worked for marijuana companies in Arizona, said it can take couple more frustrating days before the Marijuana Regulatory Agency gives final clearance to move the harvested marijuana for packaging and distribution.
Zaki has watched the fledgling industry and its labs become more sophisticated and careful as time moves forward. In the past, sample collectors have arrived in shorts and sandals. He watched with dismay as their hairy exposed arms or dangling necklaces plunged into harvested marijuana, potentially contaminating the product.
“We’ve heard from customers who test with other labs and they’re sometimes ... throwing the samples into trunks of personal vehicles,” said Welch. “In the summertime, we’ve measured the heat in different trunks that goes up to 160, 170 degrees. Well, that kills your customers’ THC and cannabinoid profiles.”
Whatever the lab test results eventually show lands on packaging that customers see on shelves or in displays.
Cannabis sits in a CureTube, which is a storage tube with a device to monitor for temperature and humidity levels, at Michigan Pure Med in Marshall, on Tuesday, June 8, 2021. (Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)Mike Mulholland | MLive.com
Viridis, a two-year-old company, conducts testing for samples from nearly 250,000 pounds of marijuana each year and charges nearly $600 for the full testing, with a discount for customers that have larger volumes, Welch said.
When Common Citizen harvests a batch of marijuana, the stalks are fed into a whirring and tumbling Mobius trimming machine that mechanically removes most of the leftover leaves or stems. It’s then passed along to dozens of hand trimmers in a sterilized, segregated room who sit at long metal tables with hair nets and protective suits conducting quality checks and plucking remaining small leaves, referred to as “crows feet.”
The acceptable-for-retail marijuana usually goes into bags similar to what one might cook a turkey in on Thanksgiving; however, they’re larger and referred to as “ostrich bags,” Welch said.
Common Citizen is allowed to use larger containers per batch, which would require fewer samples be tested, but more marijuana per batch also increases the possibility of contamination or failure of a greater amount of product.
“The maximum batch size is currently 50 pounds in Michigan, but what most of these customers have found is that 50 pounds is too big of a batch size for them to properly maintain,” Lerma said. “By that I mean there is a higher chance of there being less of a good cure with that big of a batch, so what we see in the industry is a lot of customers have moved to smaller batch sized in smaller containers.”
The separated trim at Common Citizen is bagged separately to be sold for extraction, a process that pulls THC from the plant material for use in edibles, oils, waxes, vaping cartridges or other products. Since the plant material the THC will be extracted from is eventually discarded, it doesn’t have to be handled as meticulously. The Marijuana Regulatory Agency only requires the final extract be tested, so mold or other contaminants are automatically eliminated through that process.
Zaki said about 5% of the Common Citizen’s samples may fail testing for one reason or another, usually due to mold or yeast thresholds that some in the industry criticize as overly stringent.
In that case, Zaki said the company may request a second lab test. If the sample again fails, Common Citizen has the option to remediate, which often entails placing the product in a machine that emits a radio frequency and kills molds or other microbials, but also desired terpenes that give marijuana aroma and flavor. It doesn’t significantly affect THC potency, Zaki said.
Related: Terpenes increasingly driving marijuana consumer demand
A second option is to repurpose the marijuana to be sold for extraction, but that translates to a significant loss of value, sometimes in the realm of 90%.
If a batch tests positive for certain pesticides or the harmful fungus aspergillus, it must be destroyed, which usually involves feeding the product into a wood-chipper and mixing it with dirt or products like cat litter to make it unusable and unidentifiable.
While the state has access to destruction data. Marijuana Regulatory Agency spokesman David Harns in April told MLive: “Although destructions are documented in METRC, we do not have reports that drill down into this data.”
The same destruction requirements apply to samples that make their way to labs across the state.
Viridis mixes its processed or unused marijuana samples with kitty litter before sending it to a landfill.
Care to learn more about Michigan’s marijuana industry from some of its key players? MLive is hosting an online Cannabis Insights information and networking event June 17 from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. featuring industry experts who will discuss various topics from the perspectives of businesses and consumers. Event and ticketing info is available here.
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