Yeast and mold limits posing ‘existential threat’ to NY’s marijuana growers

Leah DiGiacobbe from Talon Analytical is quoted in this story and will speak on a panel about labs and growers during NY Cannabis Insider’s conference on Nov. 4 in Tarrytown. The full-day event will feature a slew of expert-led panels, free business consultations and professional headshots, networking, lunch and a happy hour.

Leaders of NY’s largest cannabis business association say certain aspects of the state’s marijuana testing regulations are unnecessarily strict and that if they’re not changed, most of NY’s conditionally licensed growers won’t be able to sell their weed.

The Office of Cannabis Management last month posted testing requirements for marijuana flower and extract. Those rules include yeast and mold limits that Dan Livingston, executive director of the Cannabis Association of New York, said aren’t realistic, especially for weed grown outdoors.

On a recent call with about 50 licensed conditional cultivators, Livingston said nearly all of them were worried their plants won’t pass state yeast and mold standards.

“It sounded like most of them had been testing their harvest, and they were all concerned that there’s no way that they could test below that limit,” Livingston told NY Cannabis Insider.

“Our conversations with the Office of Cannabis Management are ongoing, and we have every faith that the OCM is going to recognize the existential threat that this poses to cultivators and this harvest.”

In an email, an OCM spokesperson reiterated the agency’s standards for total yeast and mold – less than 10,000 colony-forming units (CFU) per gram of flower, or 1,000 CFU per gram of extract – but didn’t say whether the office planned on changing them.

“The Office of Cannabis Management is continuously evaluating the limits, ensuring that testing is conducted in a manner that will promote safer products for consumers,” the statement said.

Allan Gandelman, CANY’s president and a member of NY’s Cannabis Advisory Board, said that conditional cultivators have been telling compliance officers – who are currently testing flower – that their outdoor-grown weed can’t meet the state’s standards.

Gandalman and Livingston both said they think a better system would require cultivators to test for yeast and mold and make those results public, but not judge whether a sample passes or fails based on yeast and mold levels over 10,000 CFU.

Viridis Laboratories Cannabis Testing – June 8, 2021

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 biggest thing here is that we all want the same thing,” said Gandalman, who is also president of Cortland-based Head & Heal, which holds a conditional cultivation license. “All of the farmers and the industry as a whole want consumers to be safe, and of course regulators want the same thing; because if our products accidentally make people sick, there’s no more industry, we’re all out of business.”

CANY sent the OCM a white paper advocating for the state to change the low threshold, Livingston said, and part of their argument was that states including Massachusetts and California started out with the same standard, but later walked it back.

Connecticut legislators in May passed a law that raises the acceptable standard of total yeast and mold from 10,000 CFU to 100,000 CFU. Connecticut’s decision came after Florida and Michigan mandated the same standard for their legal cannabis programs.

“We were able to point to other states where they had strict standards, they listened to their industry,” Livingston said.

“There was concern from the public health community that unless they had this really strict standard, there’d be public health consequences; and that just wasn’t the case in these states.”

Leah DiGiacobbe, lab manager at Garden City-based Talon Analytical, said she doubts that changing the standards on mold and yeast will negatively affect NY’s legal weed program.

However, since there aren’t many studies looking into how yeast and mold can affect user health, it’s not clear what levels present a danger.

“Unfortunately, that hasn’t really been well-studied quite yet, and it might really depend on what actually comprises the yeast and molds,” DiGiacobbe said.

“There are plenty of things we might detect that really are harmless, but if you have things over a certain quantity, it’s just kind of an indicator that the product is generally dirty.”

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