The Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency will open a new testing lab by January next year as a means to keep the state's booming cannabis industry in check and, hopefully, push standards into a new era of safety.
The state agency announced Friday that Claire Patterson, its longtime scientific manager, will serve as director of the new lab. Patterson, who earned a master's in plant biology from Michigan State University, is now the state's largest asset in its safety regulations against an industry that's moving fast and sometimes not playing by the rules.
"I went to MSU for like 10 years and got my bachelor's and master's in plant biology and then ended up working in a cannabis testing lab before it was really sanctioned. We had a medical program then but we were not set up for major sales yet. I was managing the testing lab and was essentially in that space when the state released regulations. I knew then there had to be a bridge between the cannabis industry and these testing regulations. I came in (to the CRA) in March of 2019. When I was hired, we had to get labs up and running. We had only four licensed labs at that time, who were effectively operating before the regulations took place. My goal and marching orders at that time were to get them into compliance with the rules."
"We are building the plane as we are flying it, kind of. Making sure people were getting on board with their testing methods was critical. We wanted to make sure those (novel) testing methods could be referenced back to industries that had been around a long time. We looked at the food-based testing and tried to adopt that methodology, reference methods of the FDA or AOAC (Association of Official Agricultural Chemists). That was a challenge in and of itself. But it was a big thing I poured myself into, to work with these third-party bodies to make these methods fit in cannabis and not just the food industry."
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