California’s cannabis industry will soon become very familiar with the term “OCal.” This will be the state’s version of the National Organic Program, which creates and enforces the rules and “uniform national standards” for any agricultural product grown for sale in the U.S. Official organic status is unavailable to the cannabis industry as it is a federal designation, and cannabis is illegal under federal law. But as organic practices in the United States become more common, many California cannabis producers and consumers want the option of organic cannabis.
So, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is in the process of building OCal, a “comparable-to-organic cannabis” program, and this week held their fifth and final working group meeting in Sacramento, California. The state’s OCal program will launch January 1, 2021, and will be available only to state cannabis license holders.
As part of the learning process ahead of the OCal program launch, CDFA visited more than 50 cannabis farms, met with other regulators in the state, and shadowed people conducting organic inspections. The Department also attended a number of conferences, including the California Certified Organic Farmers annual conference, the EcoFarm Conference, and California Organic Products Advisory Committee meetings.
Read more at cannabiswire.com