higher than that we'd probably have to look at uh employ another instrument and maybe expanding their lab a little bit which we have extra space for well I guess that was going to be one of one of my questions was capacity recognizing that your potential um you know entry into this high thc market you know is a business decision and what you're you know I know that we've got a lot of things to do before you can make an informed business decision but wanted you to discuss potentially your interest in expanding capacity to you know to help folks that need to get their product tested from this emerging market perspective yeah I mean we have the capacity uh to build into a um the space that we have currently there's another uh probably I don't know how to say square feet but right next door uh actually attached to the space we have now we could probably move into and utilize that space as well um it would take us probably two months to set up that space but it wouldn't be that difficult to do that and especially for determining THC CVD levels using HPLC would be pretty quick process to expand out and and do extra testing you know 60, 80, 100 samples per day we have to we also have to train up our personnel which takes about probably four to six weeks we are rotating currently everybody through the hemp lab the cannabis lab currently so everybody will be familiar and be able to run the equipment if necessary and the assays so that's happening currently Luke and Ryan currently are have been through the process and are now certified to run these assays besides carnally and Sydney so uh and then probably the next three or four months we'll have two or three more people go through training and certification to run uh these assays so I see no problem expanding as long as the market is there and again it's a cost-benefit analysis that we have to go through but you know as long as we have a value then we can justify the cost um you said that you could or but yesterday you processed 30 um cannabinoid tests yes how long does it take from the time that the sample sort of enters your door to the time that the testing is complete what's that timeline look like um so it depends on what is being required for testing um if we're talking about just cannabinoids themselves it takes us um and as well as thinking more about batching right so if we have a batch of 30 it's going to take a lot longer to process those than just one um so there's a lot of variables there but we're just talking about one sample um you probably get it running that same day processed uh run that overnight and then we could analyze the results the next day but for 30 for 30 that takes a bit longer um we could probably depending on if we have more manpower or womanpower in the in the laboratory person power person power uh in the laboratory is that we could um easily do a similar timeline let's say it's just you just have to ramp up the amount of labor that's being put into it so for two people and we've done this before where we we would process with two people to get the samples into a format that the machine can handle so what involves is is homogenizing the sample weighing it out and then uh extracting it with a solvent put it into a specific file and then put it on the instrument get the instrument calibrated all set up and then running it so you're talking uh from start to finish probably 48 hours uh if you are would you say that yeah if you were uh with with two people uh doing the uh prep work yeah there's so that's just for cannabinoids if we're talking about our longest assay which would be uh micro that has to incubate over a five day period so that's a much different story um it's going to take a similar amount of time to prep that sample but the assay and testing itself is going to take much longer more like a week yeah but they have heavy metals and terpenes and residual solvents pesticides micro toxins uh they also take their own individual prep times as well so if you want to do a full panel of analysis you're talking probably you know four days excluding micro say that thank you uh Tom and Carly and Luke one thing that we are of course struggling with as a board is that we need to make accommodations for small cultivators to break down the barriers to entry and like forgive my ignorance but uh you know how do you have suggestions for us from a testing um you know from the testing aspect about how we can help our small cultivators not be overburdened by the testing aspect which is a cornerstone of our of our mission is to have consumer safety you know the four pillars that you listed are what we need but we need to balance that against the fact that uh you know it's not for cultivators especially this is not a terribly profitable business potentially for the thousand by small cultivators we we're using the thousand square foot um kind of marker um and one thing that comes to mind just bear with me uh is you know if you tested the soil um you know do you need to continuously test the products that are grown in that soil for instance if there's no other if there's there's no turnaround and that's just one thought but uh but please if you have any thoughts on that you know this is kind of our the question that we grapple with with every decision that we're going to have to make I think we've tested soil before. We've tested soil before um I'm not sure you know I'm not I'm not a farmer I'm not a agricultureist uh you know my background is is is cancer research cell biology pharmacology um so a little bit different um but uh I would think that as long as they're not spraying stuff on the on the plant uh you should be fine as far as testing the soil for um you know contaminants heavy metals and uh let's say you know pesticides that might be in the soil uh I think that would be fine as long as the the company the farmers not spraying his his product with roundup or something like that but you would never do it anyway um but yeah um another head I was gonna say I think what the state has developed for the hemp program is they've done a pretty good job of accommodating for these things whereas if you haven't been at you know an apple orchard you don't have to test for heavy metals if you're organic you don't have to test for pesticides I know one of the big burdens there became each different strain you grow you have to do the complete test on each so I don't think people really took that into consideration you know when they were planting perhaps if they had four different varieties of hemp cultivars they would have to do all these tests four different times um you know someone's growing indoors it could be a little different certainly different varieties can you know uptake pesticides and heavy metals differently but those are things you have to worry about so much in a controlled loop you know you might be able to minimize the amount of testing they do on a you know a grow depending on how many different varieties they have for strains we know that it has to be amenable to the farmer the processor and the consumer and you know also from regulatory's respect so it has to be has to work for everybody otherwise it's not going to work for anybody so it has to work for us as well but we want to we want to you know help the market anywhere we can because you know that's that's our our goal is to help the farmer and the producer processor as much as possible and you know whatever we can do to help with that we'll we'll do we're trying to figure out more efficient ways to do the processing here and you know we've been looking at it and have some ideas that maybe could speed things up and maybe make it a little bit more efficient are we've done that with our our gen testing lab we have become very very efficient at processing up to 200 samples in a day and you know it just works like clockwork currently and we're hoping to be able to apply and apply those those techniques those ideas that we use for that into the hemp lab the cannabis lab that's our goal we can you know sort of streamline the extraction process make it more efficient that would definitely reduce our cost but also can pass that on to the our customers i gotta i gotta follow well i gotta follow up to peppers to chairman peppers question and it's i guess it's a different way to ask the same question first of all i know i know that you guys are very conscious of your your prices and you know those are oriented to make sure that all folks that are interested in pursuing different types of testing can afford it and are not immediately mooted out of the conversation because they can't afford it and i know i'm thankful for that so you know bouncing off of what chairman pepper said about balancing the small cultivator interest making breaking down barriers and looking at testing and looking at the cost associated with testing i would imagine that there's some kind of baseline or litmus test where there's certain there's certain elements of testing from an environmental contaminant perspective from a consumer protection perspective are absolutely necessary to conduct for any product that comes in to your lab but i'm sure that there's also additional testing that might be done now might not be done now might be required now might not be required now that could be considered you know additional marketing material for folks that can afford it and then want to figure out ways to differentiate their product and i guess you know terpenes other cannabinoid percentages that might be present in a certain strain or a certain product immediately come to mind but from your perspective where is that bright line where's it if there is one i guess where's a good place for us to kind of set a solid regulatory testing foundation and allow you know folks that have the capital to come in and differentiate their product well i think the terpenes are a good good example that i don't think have any negative impact on the consumer per se so you know as far as heavy metals go pesticides go you know microtoxins go i think those are important things that that the consumer needs to be aware of or be right be protected from but terpenes are an added value added thing and i can see that in the future is being something that vermont would have a pretty good market for as far as specialized you know have products or cannabis products with the entourage effect with terpenes so that wouldn't be necessary wouldn't necessarily have to do that but as far as running the cannabinoids we have a panel and they all come out so we differentiating THC from alpha THC to delta THC to CBD CBD wouldn't be productive because it all it requires the same amount of time and comes out at the same time with the instrument you get that all as an added effect of running that assay so differentiating them wouldn't help as far as if i just want to see THC and delta nine and CBD that we couldn't separate out say oh that's that's what you get we could but it wouldn't make any difference because we have the other derivatives in there as well in your report yeah i appreciate that and i remember you as we had discussed this previously but you know as we're thinking as pepper alluded to we're thinking of ways to get creative here always cost mine yeah i i don't know exactly but i'm probably the amount the number of times tested could be worthwhile finished product would be most important because that's what the consumer will see you know upstream testing screening maybe there's a cheaper way of doing that but the finished product i think would always have to be tested for these specific analytes at least that's my thinking but you wouldn't have to test everything your whole crop because then you would have any to sell of course so you have to get proper examples the other thing that could be done is send a consultant uh let's say say we could hire a consultant from via to go out to the farmers and give them you know ideas on how to sample a crop how to uh you know what would be necessary to fulfill the requirements for the state and that would be something that they possibly do or actually do the sampling for the farmer and bring it back to be a that's a possibility i you know just just thinking of top of my head um i don't mean to no go ahead the only other thought i have here um is that what we've done for some people that don't want to spend um the large amount of money on a full panel initially is they submit their sample enough to run a full panel but we'll just run cannabinoids for them first that way they can see if they're compliant or they can see where their levels are falling where they want them to or not and then they'll we'll be able to be contacted by them and continue on with any further testing that they want so it kind of it doesn't strap them into a full panel initially but it allows we're allowing them the the opportunity to eventually test that sample the other thing that can be done is we do in the lab here for the allergens is we can composite samples so let's say a farmer has you know several things that he wants to test but we could probably because the sensitivity of our methods are so high so so sensitive that we could probably test several composites together homogenize it and run it as a single sample and that would give us a good overview as long as nothing popped up too high of the contaminants that would save the farmer a considerable amount of money compositing there'll be an added cost to composite you know an extra 20, 30, 40 dollars or whatever but it would defray the total cost of let's say testing four samples at $195 you know that's $800 this way they would only charge you know $210 or something like that so that'd be one way to defray their cost thank you I think that's a possibility, yeah Tom, Bia is you know pretty well established you've got your ISO but for someone someone else that wants to get into the testing wants to seek a testing license you know we have to think about when to issue these licenses how we sequence that in relation to cultivator issue in cultivator licenses product manufacturer licenses and retail licenses for someone else other than you because you already have your ISO certification and you already have your building and you know when should we license like when in the process should we be licensing the testing facilities well yeah I mean I think it would be helpful to have the requirement for licensing earlier you know definitely give people a heads up because it'll take labs a while obviously to get the data together you know to obtain the license so I don't know if that kind of depends on what you consider starting the licensing process but certainly we'd hope for the you know the requirements and the parameters you were looking for and that would help out the smaller labs like with the M program they don't necessarily require the ISO certification but they essentially have the same you know the same requirements for method validation and documentation so that can certainly save smaller labs money because they don't have to go through ISO and spend the whatever twenty thousand dollars you know initially getting set up there like that yeah but they uh they have to do you know the same amount of analysis and documentation ultimately which takes time so that that aspect at least I would get out knowing the requirements knowing the requirements you know I want to see as soon as possible not just for us but especially for someone that is starting from ground zero or but yeah I'm not sure you know it makes that much difference to the process the whole process from a high level looking down you know what you know of course the lab has to be there the lab for the farmer to know that his crop is safe and the processor also has to know so I would think that maybe yeah that licensing and understanding what the requirements are would be a prerequisite for this process. Is that $1500 fee is that as you pay for the hemp testing facility I mean did that seem reasonable to you as a business owner maybe that's for your business person oh yeah $1500 yeah compared to what yeah ISO charges yes that's very reasonable what was the decision to go with ISO is that just the gold standard the decision to go with ISO versus another third party certification well so I should I should I differentiate here we're certified to the ISO 17.025 standard which is the standard for all analytical labs but we're accredited through A2LA which is a certification body so you can choose Harry Johnson or ALAC or A2LA we went with A2LA because they have a really good reputation yeah and they they they attend the same AOAC meetings we attend the same conferences meetings present at those conferences so we have a very good knowledge of them and know that they're they're a well respected organization yeah and they're they're very heavily involved in the cannabis industry I don't know so much about the other accreditation bodies but A2LA is very involved in cannabis regulations and testing yeah so but ISO we are ISO certified for the allergen lab and you know in order for to compete in the market in the larger market the food market you really should have to be you should be ISO certified for that market so that's why we went with ISO and plus we have all the nuts and bolts in place for ISO and we have a person dedicated for quality control here and that's all he does oh not all he does but a lot of what he does is looking at our ISO certification and making sure our quality control is where it's supposed to be so for him to step in and help with the hemp and cannabis certification was paramount and really made things happen very quickly for us any other questions for the VA team good moment also thank you well it's been a real pleasure getting to know you and your team and thank you for the services that you provide for Vermont in the hemp program and congratulations on the acquisition of the IP for the the testing that we came up with that's pretty exciting at a Vermont company did that you know when we were visiting the lab you also had a great COVID story I feel like you guys adapted very quickly and were able to accommodate a lot of your employees' needs and it's just another great success story again but thank you for being here thank you and yeah we were very lucky with the last year with the uh when the pandemic struck that we were able to take half our employees offline for a week and keep the other half here for working it was probably a strain on on our employees for that one week but they were off the next week so that helped a lot and nobody lost salary nobody lost any benefits and that was really helpful to them and to us as well of course and to our our clients our our customers so yeah it was a win-win for everybody and we definitely want to keep everybody safe Luke and Adam just came back from a conference in Phoenix and since they just came back they're having to wear a mask here so we want to keep everybody safe Carly has an underlying condition that she has to wear a mask and but we're all fully vaccinated at least all three of us and so we're just doing what we have to do to to make sure that everybody's safe and we can still do what we have to do thank you oh great yeah well thank you very much and I'm sure we'll be in touch as we kind of move through some of these regulations around testing for your advice and your help if there's anything else we can do please don't hesitate to ask we're glad to help and you know whatever it is thank you yeah great thank you very much thank you so we're a little bit ahead of schedule I don't think our next witness can join before two so I'd like to do just a 15 minute break if everyone's okay with that Dan are you with us? Dan you need a star six to unmute yourself sorry are you there? Can you hear me? Yeah now we can hear you um so we're back from the cameras sorry what was that? I just said there's a bit of an echo sorry okay we'll let us know if it's you know you're unable to proceed but Dan Chang you're the co-founder of kriya botanicals you know you're a product manufacturer in the hemp world we just would love to hear from you about kind of what's involved with kriya what what you guys do and you know maybe just some of the challenges that you see as as we transition as a state into an adult use recreational market and maybe some of the opportunities that there might be for product manufacturers and I don't know if there's anything specific about the law that you want to talk about or or any kind of just pitfalls that we might be headed towards as a regulatory agency that you want us to be that you want on our radar as kind of a product manufacturer in the hemp world. Sure I'm happy to and I'll apologize in advance if I have any poor reception or cutouts I'm calling you from the beautiful Vermont State Park so a bit of a tough one but so yeah pepper's right I am one of the co-founders of kriya botanicals we are in South Burlington we're about four years old now and started out in the hemp economy right when legalization failed last time in the legislature so we decided to pivot and learn what we could about CBD because it would seem to us to be the perfect analog if we someday wanted to get into a recreational marijuana markets to learn about the extraction the growing the analytics of the plant and CBD seemed like a logical place to do that so to that end about four years ago we started growing hemp I grew for two years we learned was I didn't need to keep growing there would be plenty of farmers getting into hemp and boy was that correct and the other thing was that what Vermont really needed was not more growers at the time but they needed analytics to legitimize the industry and they also needed extraction capacity in the state because all of that hemp needed to have the value add somehow to get to a finished product and extraction is where that happens so we spent the next couple years learning about analytics and extraction and we finally opened up fighting certified organic really high-end boutique oils to the CBD market and providing analytics as well limited analytics so we opened up a small lab kind of a proof-of-concept lab and we were doing an extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide which produces a very very pure extract a very very high quality what's called a crude oil in the business and that crude oil can then be further it can be formulated with but it can also be further refined into more potent concentrates like distillate and isolate and all sorts of consumer concentrates but y'all starts with the plant and the crude oil and then the analytics to make sure that you've got a clean product so the full panel of analytics of course would include potency the percentage of the cannabinoids you're looking for your target cannabinoids whether they're CBD or THC or now CBG or then you move on to look at the purity of your oil in terms of do you have heavy metals from the soil do you have residual solvents from your extraction if you use things like ethanol to extract rather than carbon dioxide are there pesticides residual pesticides from your farming or from your neighbor's farm so all of these things go into the analytical suite that tells you if your your crude oil is clean and so that's what we did to start and it was a very very niche market providing this high-end oil and our throughput was very small with the co2 extraction because we were only able to do about 10 pounds in extraction so maybe 30 40 pounds a day at max so we decided to add on another extraction methodology which is ethanol the ethanol also makes a high quality crude oil but not quite as high quality as co2 there is residual solvent that needs to be taken care of and it can be further purified into all sorts of things as well but the benefit of the ethanol extraction is that you have a much much much higher throughput so i'm doing hundreds of pounds a day instead of 20 30 40 pounds a day all of a sudden so our lab now we built a new lab in 2020 unfortunately in south burlington and we added ethanol extraction so it's not unique but it is very rare for our cbd extraction lab to have two methodologies usually you build a lab around one whether it's co2 or ethanol and we do both and we do analytics and we were the states in the northeast first new england's first certified usda organic lab we're also certified kosher so we're going after all of these audits and third-party certifications to try to seem legitimate in the lack in the lack of ratified state or federal cbd laws so that's the world that i've been existing in up until now working with the fire marshals in south burlington to build our new lab was quite a process that was a new thing to them so we jump through every hoop with third-party audits and engineering audits and i think they were very grateful to have the experience and i was very grateful to be audited by the state and kind of be in the good graces with the fire department so that's that's kind of where we stand now and i think i'll shift to talk about a little bit about the upcoming rec market and where extractors like myself might find themselves and some of the pros and cons of how i see it um one of the main things that's important to realize for us is that extraction labs and analytical labs have an extremely high barrier to entry um because of the instrumentation that's involved the machines are very expensive um hundreds of thousands of dollars usually um now that i've gone through all of the fire audits i know that that part of it getting all of the engineering audits and the correct machinery adds tens of thousands of dollars many extraction labs run clandestinely outside of the purview of of anybody because the laws are so lax right now but when you want to run completely approved by the state and by engineers it's a lot more expensive so having a visible legitimate lab is quite expensive to do and it's all the same on the analytics side the instrumentation is hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars also the people that you hire the personnel these are trained chemists that we work with these are not fifteen seventeen dollar an hour jobs although i do have some of those employees on my bottling line and in packaging i really have to hire employees that understand chemistry and botany and things like that so i've got salaried employees and they're all paid very well so that's another barrier to entry now when i'm considering joining the vermont rec marijuana market there's a number of things the issues that i have to consider number one is it was allowed to happen somehow that the current permit holders are out of state sometimes multinational public companies with more money is increases right so here i am a small vermont entrepreneur and i have to decide whether or not i can compete with these kind of competitors now not only are they large they've got a lot of money they may have up to 10 years operating in the space and other states or other countries they're going to have vertical licenses which means that their margins are going to be astronomically better than mine and that their market share will be much bigger than i will ever be also if they get a head start of an indeterminate amount of time months six months a year three months i don't i don't know what that time is going to be but i would then come into the market facing these giants with all of this money and experience and they have 100 of the market share already so that's a very daunting market for a company of vermont entrepreneur like myself to face i've been in the market now for four years working towards this moment when i might be able to apply for an extraction permit but i really i'm an established business in the cbd market now and that's got its own ups and downs and i've really got to take a hard look at whether this market is even accessible to a company like mine and and i'm actually head and shoulders above most entrepreneurs because i've already got the equipment and i've got four years of experience and i've got people trained on using it and so please i've i've already got a lot that most people don't have and yet i'm on still way way way way behind the people that will already be there so that's a major consideration of mine um another one would be probably growing um you know i'm sure you've heard of other states have had nightmares of opening up their rec and having too little supply of flour and then maybe too over supply of flour that happened out west a lot um they didn't establish their growth correctly so that was an issue um so you know as a hemp supplier i like to get as much quality product as i can from one farmer which would speak to having very large growth having small lots of little farmers um that's difficult for me records wise it's difficult for me in terms of quality and it's expensive analytics wise but if i have the same hemp that's consistent from one farmer that knows how to grow it and try it i much prefer that as a cbd extractor now in the rec marijuana market i think it's a little bit different there is a variety that people want so i think that having large growth that can fill the pipeline are essential but also having local smaller growth that can um provide the quality um would be it's also necessary sorry i'm being asked to move my car by the park rager um so there are there are a number of considerations uh in growing the hemp as well um the as an extractor i am really interested in i want to make sure you everybody can still hear me am i still coming through yeah you're coming in yeah we hear you again okay i'm just going to move my car so this ranger gets off my back that's okay i'm not making any friends so which park are you in i am in little river i'm only in waterbury i'm up at the reservoir okay yeah it's gorgeous beautiful day um so you know i was i was kind of talking yeah great fishing i've been eating rainbow trout for breakfast this morning that we just caught so i've been speaking a little bit about some of the concerns that are on top of mind i know for me and my partners number one being is the market accessible even um i know that it's it's already a done deal with who holds the licenses but i do believe there's probably still some wiggle room and how the the market is created and how those how they're allowed to operate in terms of i don't know if it's verticality or in terms of lead time that they're allowed to have but i would urge the people or the board to consider Vermont businesses and smaller Vermont businesses when you're looking at this because it's going to be a major uphill climb for us to enter this market and i'm speaking just as an extractor i assume for analytics for growing and for retail it'll it'll all be similar stories um beyond that the big picture growing making sure that there is enough in the marketplace to get the market going but also enough so that small Vermont growers can have a place as well um and can contribute their knowledge expertise and quality to this as well in the hemp market there's a in the hemp regulation market there's this Vermont products that have to be grown in Vermont by Vermont farmers and certified in Vermont and i don't know if something like that would work in the rec market as well um but it's something to think about i'm happy to field any questions that anybody there has for me as well yeah i have a question this is kyle harris it's a it's a pleasure to me to be a via phone with a beach and person sometime in the near future i look forward to it yeah i look forward to it authorizing legislation there's a there's a 60 cap on concentrates and i was hoping you might be able to speak to your perspectives on that and how that potentially could also be a barrier for you and your business to enter this market we've we've heard from others that it could potentially be but would what would love to get your thoughts yeah thanks for bringing that up kyle let's flip my mind and it's actually huge um so i mentioned earlier how we extract the raw biomass plant material into a crude oil and that crude oil then gets refined into any number of concentrates that can go into products or can be consumed as is in the marijuana world or sorry in the rec world you see things like shatter and hash and all these crazy things that are made um they're all all of the concentrates which are a massive massive part of the market i don't i don't have a number of the market share of concentrates in my mind but they're all about 60 percent as far as i know the crude oil that comes out of my extractors is usually 60 to low 80s percent now that's the crude oil when i refine it further it's 80s percent in 80 purity into the 90s percent purity that's and and there are myriad concentrates that are used in the rec market and all of those would pretty much be taken off of the shelf so you'd be looking at things like flour gummy bears and edibles and things like that but a lot of the concentrates that people really enjoy would not be a part of the market so that is that you know if that's a rule that they should just get dropped in my opinion um that's that's something that's going to put a major hamper on um the extraction and the well the extraction as long as we as long as we dilute the product down to whatever legal amount like you said if it was 60 percent then we could still participate but we would never be able to participate nationally we would be watering down the quality and diluting the quality of the product to make it Vermont legal and then nobody else would want it in New York or Boston or anywhere really so we'd be kneecapping ourselves as a state by doing that in my opinion so uh 30 questions further questions about that i can speak to it oh good i have a further question about that i just you know because we talk about concentrates being in like you were saying 80 90 percent purest form what can you talk about what it would be diluted with to get it 60 percent uh yeah that's a good question um i think that people would be making a lot of edibles maybe putting it into a lot of adjustable foods but if you're talking about and i don't even know like in the cbd world we have to do this and we use things like mct oil coconut oil to make tinctures and things like that we dilute it to a legal limit which that allows us to ship it federally it allows people to formulate with it um but the cbd stuff is not it's a different market because those are all smaller dosages in the marijuana market granted there are smaller dosage edibles but a lot of the concentrate market is on purity and it's on high potency so all of those products like i said would be kneecapped by something like this um i can't answer directly what you would mix it with maybe lower maybe a lower potency oil so you know it knocks it down but again you're really just compromising the quality um by doing it and you know some people might say well why do you need something to be 80 90 pure of course you don't you just don't um but that's the market i mean that there is a concentrate market it's a diverse market it's a sizable market it's based on quality um so you know the market exists and again if we were wanted to compete nationally this would be a pretty major issue yeah well i guess you know your your response to not necessarily knowing how you would approach the dilution part of that gives me pause because as we heard from prior testimony you know vermont folks are they have that that's what ingenuity and they'll figure out how to do it but from a consumer protection perspective from a quality perspective what does that mean and um you know how what the board go about ensuring acceptable practices for that would be back down to that 60 percent and dan can i pick up on something that you said which was i think you said that a lot of this extraction is happening in people's garages in the kind of clandestine market already so does this just leave a bit of does that leave that kind of clandestine market vibrant as well i mean is that oh of course of course i mean the black market will will always be there uh you know you you want to not get as small as you can or get rid of it but the fact is the quality is is there in the black market the growers in the black market are better than any medicinal grower than any medicinal lab that exists and these you can make these in your garage so people will they they have been for decades and they they will continue so yeah again it will exist it's just a better review on a regulated or or that um i would think you do another one that you kind of a sidebar to this um that you should think about is in the hemp world and i don't know about the proposed rec laws i haven't read them enough detail but we're not allowed to use in the hemp world we're not allowed to use hydrocarbons here in Vermont meaning propane hexane pentane these are all hydrocarbons that are very very commonly used to extract cannabis and they they produce extremely high quality extracts um but they are very toxic plastic chemicals and if not used that are regulated in safe manner extremely dangerous and also if they're if their extracts are not properly tested um you don't know if there is residual solvents in it which is dangerous and that's the problem with these clandestine labs that you brought up is that many many many labs in the cbd world um are clandestine because there there weren't certifying bodies when i when we started there were no fire marshals going out um department of health and ag wasn't going out to look at any labs so that's why we started doing things like organic and kosher just so we would start to get audited um so you know a lot of people are doing this stuff in their basements and they're not purging their oils of these solvents um so that's why i think that it's smart to give it space in the rec market but regulate it but make sure that the rules are there and the specs are there and the analytics are in place to ensure safe products because people will be making them either way um yeah and as an extractor i've never touched this stuff because i haven't been allowed to and that's why i don't i don't really know how to dilute this or i really don't know um how we would manage a 60 purity thing just yet i've got a question on a different topic anyone want to talk about concentrates anymore good um dan uh we uh by statute are supposed to um prioritize uh in breakdown barriers for small cultivators but i want to pick up on something that you mentioned um you need a consistent product uh the raw materials to be consistent of consistent quality so how do we thread that needle are you just not gonna i mean should we just rely on the small cultivators for um for flour and not the kind of processed products or the extracted products or i mean do you have any thoughts on that like how we can build out our craft cultivation using small farmers but also create these kind of products these extractions yeah it's a tough one you know there has to be some kind of pure system i would imagine where you've got you know your Vermont small cultivators um and this is tricky because i think that's where your best quality is going to come from but that's also where probably most of your not i won't say worst quality but potential glitches will come from too um you're going to have really conscientious excellent growers but then there's going to be a couple people who are smaller and they're just they just don't have the technology and the place set up to grow quality safe flour which is it's not easy to do it over and over it's easy to do it once but it's not easy to do it over and over and over again at scale and maintain spec um so it has to be kind of the balance where you let people in that know what they're doing and are competent at it while making sure that you weed out the yahoos that just want to grow marijuana and think that it's a fun thing to do there will always be those people that know weed themselves out to a certain extent but you do you do need to have the size the more sizable grows just to keep the pipeline full as well i don't know how many dispensaries you envision are going to be open or how much flour you envision is going to be sold over your quarter over quarter annually year over year but the small growers probably aren't going to be able to keep up with that any consistent fashion so there needs to be a pipeline a base that fills the pipeline as well and i i see that coming from these big let these big guys do what they do best these big operations they've got the money they've already got big grows in canada and all over the country they know exactly how to do it and they've got the growers to come do it um and let the smaller growers shoot for quality um and i you know beyond that i i don't have a heck of a lot of advice there obviously has to be some middle of the ground as well but um in terms of how many permits uh that that i'll leave up to you i don't know but it is important like i said to make sure you've got consistent quality product but you know also i should mention i don't know how this is all going to get timed out if these um if uh you know analytics and growing and retail are going to be phased in you know in quarters or if they all get released at once but um you know obviously extractors as an extractor we can't extract without the hemp flower and the retail can't open without the flower and the extracts and we all need analytics so everything has to be layered and kind of going at the same time so we could all open at the same time as well um timing of these permit releases is also really really critical yeah and i was actually just gonna ask you about that i mean you i think korea unfortunately was kind of the guinea pig on a lot of the hemp program and the fire safety that you mentioned um but now that we're a little bit more established in this day uh how long would it take a you know korea if you're starting today from scratch to get up to where you are um at this moment oh man uh you know that's a great question and it depends on if you're actually starting from scratch where you've got to buy machines and train people how to use them because the learning curve on that on getting your machines running the way you want them and producing what you want to is is month i mean it took us probably better part of the year um to get everything running smoothly the way we wanted it to now if you're a huge multinational company with a lot of money you can bring in experts and machinery and have it running within a couple weeks if you've already got the people but if you're starting from scratch as a Vermont entrepreneur it could take it would take a minimum of three or six months to get your machines and your staff up and running um so yeah you would need to have not only a hemp at that time you need to have analytics because i mentioned briefly but analytics brings the legitimacy to everything the growers need it to know how if their plants are are legal and on spec and the lab and or the extraction labs need it to know um if what they're producing is on spec most extraction labs do not have analytics in house we do just for a matter of qa qc and it keeps us moving really well and it may be the reason why we're still around while some people aren't but um to run a lab on analytics lab on top of an extraction lab is a lot of learning and a lot of work so and it all has to happen together all growing labs analytics and extractions all have to happen simultaneously um i mean a retail can come in after all that to sell everything that we make um but it can't come in before any of us um obviously make the stuff i got another question but i want to open it up all right uh dam when do you like to when do you like to have your product tested when you have the raw material or you know tested for heavy metals pesticides adult trans etc or when you have your it's a great question it's a great question so i'll give you the rundown on the hemp side how we do it um the farmer is obligated to to do a full panel of tests on his hemp so her hemp so that lets us know about the potency of the biomass make sure that it's legal because in the hemp world that's important that they can't have too much thc in it well as it's marijuana and everybody's in trouble but so there's potency there is residual i mean sorry there's heavy metal um there's pesticides things like that moisture then it gets into our lab if all those check out it comes into our lab we'll test it again for potency to make sure it matches and is legal to make sure that we can run it we'll then extract it and as soon as we have the crude oil we'll test the crude oil to see the potency then we also have to test it mandated by sorry mandated by the state we have to test it to make sure that it doesn't have any more residual solvent or pesticides or anything like that in it quite um so we have to do a whole other full panel and then after that we formulate a product out of it so we'll make it into a tincture or into a salve or a bulb or a stick something like that and we have to test it again to make sure that it's on back for the customer doesn't have what the customer wanted in it and then after that it goes to a third party lab to be tested again so you know this stuff is tested five six times as it goes through our lab and out the other end by a third party for the customer so you can see why analytics is such an important part of this because from the farmer to the customer all through our lab they'll test the same lot of stuff many many times and is that testing has this thing concentrated down become more expensive to you like you know when you start with a bunch of raw material and then you extract all the kind of CBD THC out of that I mean does that testing become you know the product itself is more expensive and so no the testing is all the testing is all the same it's the same tasks we run through and they all cost the same no matter what's what you put into the machine one thing that's different I mentioned you briefly earlier though if we have a ton of growers like right now my lab uses three or four growers so it's all the same hemp that they're vetted we know what they're growing and how they're drying and that's all happy but if I'm all of a sudden using 20 different growers of small batches of biomass that I have to be testing exponentially more I have to be testing everything everything you know that's that's daunting for me because to do one full panel it's you know three four hundred dollars and I have to do that a couple times on the product as it goes through so the the testing is I mean it's a very very large bill for my lab even though we have the potency testing in house we outsource everything else so it's not to be it's not to be just brushed aside it's a big big thing to consider when you know when the testing will be opened up and how many labs I mean you really have to have labs available and there aren't well there's be a diagnostic trying to think who else is in Vermont and you would know more than me they're the only state certified ish lab I can think of in Vermont is be a diagnostic yeah so we need more you know and these labs these labs cost millions of dollars to open up and run like I said so this is a that's a critical thing is in the hemp world we're supposed to have everything tested by a state certified lab and there are no state certified labs so we use labs in Colorado and in Philadelphia and in Boston for all of our third-party stuff it's because there aren't any Vermont state certified labs in existence so that's another thing that you're going to have to find is I'm sure there will be growers I'm sure somebody will there'll be plenty of retail applications extraction will be tough because it's so expensive in the same of labs it's so expensive to get into those are the two that are going to be hard to get a lot of entrepreneurs into well this has been incredibly helpful I actually have one more question but it can't open up they can't work so I'm not going to ask it but um thank you Dan I mean it's just I'm so grateful that you're in Vermont it's a little distressing to hear that you know you're doing this good work and you have had to see to get into this market because of the barriers to injury so it's something that we're going to be thinking about a lot and you know hopefully we can be back in touch with you and create it as we start yeah well I really appreciate all of you giving me the opportunity to speak today I'm sorry I'm a little bit distracted by my dog and park rangers and campers but I don't know how many people are in the room there but I obviously would love to show you our lab in person and show you the machines and the extracts and the analytical equipment to explain it to you and have you meet our employees the wonderful Vermont employees um because it's the kind of lab honestly it's the kind of lab you want in Vermont uh we are Vermonters employing good jobs we're we're hiring people from out of state to come move here and live here and they're having kids here this is the kind of thing that's good for Vermont so it's important that that we are allowed to have a place in this economy because it's a big one and we've been waiting for it and working towards it and like I said I would love to show you our facility so so please reach back out to to Bill and to me and and come into our lab and and see it for yourself sometimes soon that's great thank you so much we will do that thank you and thanks for taking the time while you're out you know on vacation in the state parks yeah I'm happy to do it anytime it's important thank you so that's our last witness for the day we have some time set aside for public comment we'll follow the same procedure we'll start with the folks that have joined through the link if you have a public comment please raise your virtual hands and we'll start with you tell you both you both good afternoon you guys uh just want to say thanks a lot for the work you're doing and um it was great hearing Dan you know talk about concentrates and whatnot I just wanted to kind of echo what he was saying about these 60 percent THC caps um it's going to be really hard to make quality concentrates that can compete on a national level you know limiting to 60 percent and to go to the things like what we might cut them with are probably things that I don't want to consume and put in my body I mean you can use like extra terpenes like he said the MCT oil but it's just you know a lot of people want to smoke those things because they're not inhaling any plant material so it's actually a bit healthier for your body um myself included and you know I just really want Vermont to be able to compete in that category like we do in every other craft category you know being like kind of the best in show and then I know that you had a question that he couldn't answer and concentrates take up about 13 percent of the market you know is what in sales and that's from like the bds analytics from california so i'm assuming it's going to be fairly similar thanks thanks for that yeah thank you yeah thank you um eric reef if you want to unmute yourself uh we can barely hear you uh we can hear you yeah yeah we can hear you just a second I'm going to shut my bluetooth off that might be the culprit because I do have um any better now for oh yeah there you are yeah go ahead okay all right all right so on the 60 percent I've been making some notes here so I may um I may say some things that have been said on the 60 percent um what you're doing is you're making everybody uh have to add a cut or have to add carrier oils uh we just mentioned we don't want to inhale that we don't want to consume that so you're going to take all the the the dabbing and all the vape completely out of the market and uh the the difference from the 60 uh up to um you're gonna have to cut because at the base I can go up to 75 6 percent myself a lab can take that up to 82 3 with better filtration and then you can run that through a short path to get that into the 90s then this is what I don't like medically is then they take that into a reactor and and take everything out so there's um there's no more regulators uh medically um so uh what you're the difference between the 60 and the 90 is is how the fats the lipids what would be called in the vaping and dabbing world the undesirables so we don't want to combust any more fats any more waxes than we have to and by making us go to 60 you're going to make us artificially add some and nobody wants to vape uh or dab any of that and they won't and so you're going to uh you're going to increase some illegal activity plus you're gonna make it dangerous because butane which it's illegal it's in the bill and it should not be used because of the flash points so low um it leaves all those undesirables behind it only picks up terpenes and cannabinoids so if you're making crap in the market and I can take butane and make real high quality terpene rich uh you know dabble the material now the problem is the solvents um I would personally I would look at uh the solvents that are left in the product like test test test on solvents um and then personally I would say no hundred percent uh I want a regulator I don't want that thing to be uh just THC because we don't know and there could be long-term use there could be problems with just THC only um that's my personal view so uh that's that's what I had for you on that sixty percent and um I think the way that you you go about that is you test on the solvents and then you test on on on any of the on anything else that's left behind that somebody would know more than me about so thank you very much. Thanks Eric uh next on the list is uh Sherman Sherman if you're there uh feel free to unmute yourself and um join my video if you'd like. Let's see here I am uh thanks for letting me share um I would like to make a comment on required microbe open ten minute testing if that's okay. We're having a little trouble hearing you um I might be having a um I actually found better for us. Okay um so is it okay if I make a comment about required microbial contaminant testing? Yeah we do. Okay um yeah I'm presently the director of regulatory affairs at medicinal genomics but previously at the New Jersey public health lab uh I was the project manager that started the cannabis testing lab for the Department of Health and I was a subject matter expert specifically for required microbial testing um and that I wanted to share the medicinal genomics as an industry leader in cannabis and pathogenomics and I was going through the internet this morning before this meeting and I noted that presently Vermont requires the microbial tests as was mentioned by the laboratory representatives earlier this afternoon uh total aerobic microbial count and total yeast and mold. On the other hand and I'll be you know sending in a written comment on this you know we recommend the microbial testing specifications that were originally recommended by the Fido Science Institute um submitted in 2016 to the Vermont Medical Cannabis Program because we want to ensure safe product for both patients as well as consumers and the the tests that Fido Science Institute recommended were the species specific human pathogens which are the shigatoxin produced in E. coli the salmonella species and the three pathogenic strains of asrogelus and and the most important fact I want to just share with you the two tests that you require right now in the medical cannabis program when you get a result for total aerobic and total yeast and mold you don't get any information whether the cannabis sample is contaminated with any dangerous microbes to human health so I'm just going to say why do these tests and so I just wanted to share that um but I'll be sending him a formal comment in the near future thank you very much can you also just include your contact information when you do that oh yeah I'll definitely do that um okay anyone else uh that would like to make a public comment um that join through the link please just raise your virtual hand um and uh it looks like we have one person who's joined via the phone if you would like to make a public comment please hit star six to unmute yourself and we have one person in the audience I would just echo the voice of uh that's already been said about the opposition to potency caps for a number of reasons already mentioned just another the opposition okay I don't see anyone else um for public comment so uh that's the last thing on our agenda I again we'll probably be meeting again next Thursday hopefully we can meet at 116 State Street in Montpelier and we'll probably be most likely talking about public safety issues and safe banking issues so um with that I would entertain a motion to adjourn second all in favor


Hi, my name is Nipun and I'm really excited to be a part of Maddie's 2019 which has been organized by Exchange for Media. Maddie's is a highly prestigious award and as being part of the jury we all I think will be judging on basically three most important parameters. The first one is innovation. The second one is creativity and the third one is execution and results. So all of you all those participants who are really eager to join us and you know be a part of Maddie's 2019 we all look forward to some really exciting entries from all of you. Thank you so much.


With nearly a thousand videos or mostly lectures online One can say I've made a fair Number of recordings today. I want to show you though this new Canon EOS in well, it's not that new but New in my bag what I'm used to of course doing these lectures is a cumbersome Let's put that away cumbersome digital SLR 5T Mark II nice and full-frame In excellent video quality, but of course quite a piece of bulk to carry around and making these videos So I thought let's get Something smaller that I can take with me. You never know where the possibility strikes you of the opportunity to do some academic video recordings Now I specifically chose this piece of kit in as much as it came With this very nice adapter Because I have quite a few Canon lenses This little adapter here means I can fit any of my existing Canon lenses on this new mount You cannot fit normal Canon EF-S and EF lenses directly onto the schema, but with this adapter you can and It works quite well. It also has this little flash unit 90 EX For the odd photo if you really want to take some photos in the dark to be a nice little flash unit Let's have a look the camera itself then Here we go It's a as you can see detachable lens an APS-C sized sensor And that's fantastic not full-frame like the 5D Mark II there, but Much better than Summing of similar size with tiny little sensors. So that's the new mount Simply attaches like any SLR camera and then I can put all the other lenses on with the adapter Not another reason why I chose this little unit is because of the pancake lens very fast f2.0 So I can shoot in quite dark Circumstances number one number two 22 millimeters in other words even though the space might be small that I'm shooting a video in Now I can get quite a wide angle on this So very nice very neat very compact easy to carry around So what do you get on the top? Well normal hot shoe for Canon as for any Canon product You're on off button right there and a switch here by by the shutter release for fully automatic for More advanced photography where you can set any of the settings that you'd really do on a digital SLR And then right on the side the video setting so if it's on that you can record video There's a video button though If you push that even though if you I think if you're not on this little record the video record setting you can still record video Very nice and bright screen. Unfortunately not articulated, but that would be the same for the 5D Mark II I do have a 600D as well and that has the articulating screen which is very nice So this screen is fixed, but it's massive more than a thousand dots there and Three inches across so very very nice indeed your menu button your playback button Your info button and then this little scroll wheel here Which also clicks in four directions and the set button nothing on this side at the bottom for the battery New battery unfortunately quite small So you need to have more than one to make these video recordings and of course your SD card slot right there Fits on a normal tripod and then on this side. You've got your HDMI cable socket there to the guy directly to high definition TV your normal mini USB port there and then also for external voice now a microphone I never record voice on any of these but certainly if you want to touch a microphone there you can I'm not familiar with this unit As much what we have in the front is we've got it on the Camera setting which is this tiny little dial here as I said around the shutter release. So it says camera so we've got it there and This is a beautiful touch screen in other words as soon as we get going This I just press the shutter button there. We have a screen here now I'm just pointing it at the table here. She's not going to see anything But it's touch sensitive So right on the top of there if I touch that I have manual settings for the movie now Remember this is all about making academic lecture videos So automatic setting and manual setting I love to have it on the manual setting The problem with the automatic setting of course as the light gets brighter or darker It's going to change as exposure So you won't have even exposure as you move As light in the room changes you want that on manual really so just the back button there Told you we now on manual movie mode. So with the manual movie mode you get two things there. We have Shut the speed and there we have our aperture So I can set both it's manual the camera will not do it for you As I said, that's the type of control that I like so if you click on That that'll give you how many frames per second. You can just click on it Just drag it around 30 is the slowest it will go now because of some Settings that I'll show you later. So it just moves back 4.0. There's my aperture. That is how wide the little opening is in the lens The larger this number goes the smaller. Remember the aperture is the less light gets Through but also the wider the depth of field If you've got a very narrow depth of field some things in front or behind you might not be in focus if you find Front of the board you might be in focus on the board not all the other way around So ideally you want to go 5.6 as I said before I chose this package with the pancake lens That's if it can go all the way down to if 2.0, which is wide open Which means a lot of light can come in so if you're shooting a lecture in a hall That's not as brightly lit. You can certainly do that Yeah, we just have the ISO setting. That's the sensitivity as it was in all days of film So if it perhaps the room is too dark, you can bump up the ISO 200 400 of course you do pay the price of a bit of grain now on this camera It's an APS-C size sensor.  So certainly the sensor can really handle a very high ISO still shooting at ISO 1600, which is And quite a bit of darkness you won't see as much grain Okay, so we move back to ISO of 100 which is standard there and we can just go back So those would just be the the normal settings, of course you can Elect any way on the screen where you want the focus Where you want the focus to be now? Let's just pop into the main menu there Well, let me just go back and show you there's that quick access button That just gives you a list of the most common features that you want to do So you give the different types of autofocus mode This is autofocus lens and they're also just the autofocus looking for face and it will actually track the face Which is not really what you want if you want to set up for lecture and the camera static set your settings Have them all in manual. Don't let the camera try and track anything But that was for autofocus raw that really is this for still photos That's the one I'm interested in the movie recording modes I'm shooting in full high definition at 30 frames per second. I can also do a more cinematic 24 frames per second I can go up to 60 frames per second there But then I only shoot at HD ready quality one to 80 instead of the full 1920 by 1080 There's one to 80 by 720p It's progressive scan 60 frames per second there In other words, I can down convert to 30 or 24 frames per second actually get quite good quality slow motion there and then also for much smaller video there and The video that the sound effects they haven't played with your white balance sitting as I said set it for what it is in that room Incandescent light and all the all the different types of light or sun coming in through the side Whatever just set the white balance. Do not leave it on automatic Otherwise a cloud moves in the front of the Sun the white balance changes. Someone puts on a light in the light Color casts over your your screen. There's some picture styles if you want to to Play around with those but more for photography. Although some people really use it in video as well You can get some very nice effects there, but that's for a different time So this is our menu setting as as most can in can in digital SLR remember This is basically a 650d and a tiny little Range find the type style body very easy to carry around but full digital SLR capabilities really in this small package So again, I can just move around Scrolling the wheel tapping to the side all the same or I can just simply touch on the screen any of these settings So there The image quality that I want to shoot always shoot video of photos in the raw the histogram That I like his brightness the type of grid that I like and The autofocus mode you can set here as well autofocus mode plus manual focus and Which means you can let the camera focus and still turn the focus ring The lens aperture those we don't want to need or won't worry about these are for for photography really Picture style I always leave it at neutral and then there's your video settings as I said there we go I chose 1920 by 1080 30 frames a second. That's why the shutter speed only went down to 30 and some other settings there to play with and then Lastly the delete button again the set button If if you just shooting normally so instead of hitting Q there I can hit the Q on they get to the same settings Most of all remember put it in manual mode if once it's in manual movie mode set your ISO set your aperture There we go. Let's say for Ran about for the office that I shoot in and then a shutter speed slow as possible I'm shooting at 30 frames a second so I can certainly not get the shot to take less than 30 frames per second And there we go. Beautiful


FAO leads global efforts to defeat hunger. I would like to share four reasons why partnerships and investment in food safety are essential to achieving their goal. First, better production. Safe food begins with better agricultural production. The health of people is connected to the health of plants, animals and the environment. This is why the One Health approach is vital. Second, better nutrition. To get the nutrients we need from food it has to be safe. Nutrient intake and hazard exposure data tell us that when food is safe and part of a healthy diet, we will be better. FAO promotes stronger food safety and nutritious policies and good practices across the agri-food system. That includes using codex alimentarios, food safety and quality standards. Third, better environment. Increasing the sustainability of agri-food systems is a priority for FAO. Keeping food safe is a win for the environment because it reduces food loss and food waste. And a win also for the people because their health and food security will be improved. Finally, better life. When food is safe, consumers are healthier and producers can sell their product on the domestic market and trade internationally. Safe food will benefit for all. I encourage everyone to invest time and efforts in keeping food safe. Food safety is everyone's business. Join us on the 7th of June for the World Food Safety Day.