Food Safety and Recreational Marijuana

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Colorado’s fledgling recreational marijuana industry has a new set of rules to live by. And as KUNC’s Luke Runyon reports, many of them deal with food safety. 

Until now, products infused with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, didn’t have to be tested in a lab. But manufacturers of so-called “edible marijuana products” must now test their creations for foodborne pathogens like E.Coli and salmonella, plus a test to see how potent it is.

“Because most of the edibles don’t test and they don’t know," Genifer Murray, owner of CannLabs, a Denver-based marijuana testing lab says. "You don’t know what’s in your product unless you test it.”

The soon to be required testing will likely open up a whole new ancillary business for the recreational marijuana industry.  Murray, for example, says she’s expanding her lab to handle all the added volume expected to come with mandatory testing.