BMCLA in discussions with BNSI

THE Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Licensing Authority (BMCLA) is working closely with the Barbados National Standards Institute (BNSI) to develop a set of standards for the medicinal cannabis industry.

This was revealed by CEO of the BMCLA, Dr. Shantal Munro-Knight. She highlighted that they were working to develop the testing parameters that will be a requirement throughout the group system that they had within their licensing system.

“So that before anything can go to market or even be exported, you will be required to have a Certificate of Analysis (COA) and to be able to show that COA and then the authority will have the right to do further inspections,” she said.

She encouraged everyone to make sure they had access to the processing guide and to make sure they were following the specific standards that they had outlined for the industry here in Barbados.

“That is a particular niche that we want to be able to stress on, the quality of our product and the quality control that will be in place to ensure that we are producing a high quality and safe and efficacious product,” she said.

Sheldon Straker, Founder of the Mindful Alchemy, LLC, believed that this was a step in the right direction and went on to stress that good manufacturing processes were important.

For persons looking to get involved in the medicinal cannabis industry, Straker advised them to ensure that their finished product was at the highest quality possible.

Following that, he believed that safety and risk management were also areas persons needed to put their attention on.

He explained that in Barbados, it seemed that persons were favouring the use of ethanol and it was against this backdrop that he encouraged persons to be thinking about their emergency procedures in the event that there was a spill or accident that occurred.

“Quality control is also im-portant. Know what is in your material,” he said.

He also noted that batch tracking and understanding where your materials came from were important. So that in the event there was a need to recall your product, you knew exactly where to go, which batches were affected and who you needed to notify to let them know that that batch of product needed to be disposed of. (CLJB)