SmartLedger and Sativa Testing Laboratories, LLC have announced a strategic partnership to implement CannaTrack, a blockchain-integrated platform to record forensic and cannabis laboratory data in a trustless manner. The platform will help facilitate legal, commercial, and safety claims, as well as provide transparency and accountability, ensuring consumer and public safety, enabling confidence in product content claims, and setting industry standards.
As of July 2022, 38 states within the U.S. have legalized medical cannabis use, and 19 states have legalized recreational use, to varying degrees. Public health and safety requirements demand a near real-time, cost-effective, and reliable system for cannabis producers and laboratories to record safety analysis data in a transparent and auditable manner.
Since its inception, the United States cannabis market has been plagued with a multitude of obstacles, ranging from lack of quality control, product consistency, and transparency of testing results, all in addition to lack of state and federal standardization. The issues include; reporting artificially high THC readings for cannabis sold to patients, conspiracies with growers to defraud patients by selling marijuana with less THC than indicated by test results, and significant inconsistencies between cannabinoid concentrations that are listed on labels versus what the product contains.
"As many states begin to legalize medical and commercial use of cannabis in the United States, it is imperative that we implement the highest standards of safety analysis for the protection of consumers. Combining these standards with scalable blockchain technology, we enable laboratories, producers, regulators, and consumers to have a transparent and trustless source of lab safety analysis. With expertise and their integral standard of analysis, Sativa Testing Labs is the right partner for CannaTrack to work with." said Gregory Ward, creator of CannaTrack and Chief Development Officer at SmartLedger.
CannaTrack enables cannabis producers and laboratories to record lab analysis on a verifiable, scalable, and auditable ledger. Utilizing blockchain technology, consumers and regulators scan the generated QRC to instantly verify and authenticate cannabis safety data of a particular batch or product.
The partnership between the companies seeks to improve the current auditability of laboratory analysis methods, data collection, and the reliable dissemination of results by utilizing the BSV blockchain to record and validate Certificates of Analysis, as well as other relevant data, providing regulators and consumers an auditable chain of custody and reliable source of truth. Laboratories will be able to register, log in, and record lab results and testing methodologies, which include not only final CoAs but also details of the testing methods, quality controls, analysts, raw data, calculations performed, and more.
"Our mission is to bring decades of environmental testing experience to the emerging cannabis industry and provide quality and fully accredited testing methods to a largely unregulated and non-standardized industry. It was a natural fit to bring blockchain technology into this sector to further attest to best practices," said Brandon Thorpe, Ph.D., Laboratory Director at Sativa Testing Laboratories.
"The growing attention around fraudulent lab practices, unreliable seed-to-sale tracking, and difficulties with enforcing product safety regulations highlights the need for new and innovative solutions. Blockchain technology enables the most secure and trustless method for storing and sharing this data." continued Thorpe.
"The National Institute of Science and Technology's 'Cannabis Laboratory Quality Assurance Program' Offers a comprehensive framework for the industry to follow. CannaTrack™ not only mirrors these higher standards of analysis but also provides a standard of data integrity and assurance that the public requires, and only scalable blockchain technology can provide." said Bryan Daugherty of SmartLedger.
"The BSV blockchain is the best solution when the requirements of a platform are data integrity assurance, extremely low transaction costs, and high availability of data." Daugherty continued.
The partnership is set to align innovative blockchain technologies with emerging standards within the cannabis industry. Offering data integrity that others in the industry can both adopt and benefit from. The NIST has begun the march towards standardizing laboratory analysis methods, measurements, and reporting methods, and CannaTrack and Sativa Testing Labs are answering the call with a solution.
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