M.Live
A Michigan Court of Claims judge on Jan. 2 dismissed two lawsuits linked to Michigan’s enormous 64,000-pound, $229 million 2021 marijuana recall that impacted an estimated 60% of all cannabis products in the state.
The dispute centers on the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency’s (CRA) Nov. 17, 2021 decision to recall any marijuana tested between Oct. 10 and Nov. 16, 2021 by Viridis Laboratories, a licensed safety lab tasked with ensuring cannabis products are safe for public consumption.
The CRA issued the recall after noticing the Viridis lab in Lansing passed as safe marijuana that had previously failed testing for the presence of aspergillus, a potentially harmful type of mold.
“We had started noticing in … our statewide monitoring system that packages were failing for aspergillus and then being sent the next day to the (Viridis) laboratories, at which point they were being reported as passing without remediation by the grower,” MRA Scientific and Legal Section Manager Claire Patterson testified on Dec. 2, 2021. If a product tests positive for aspergillus, the mold must be eradicated and the marijuana retested prior to sale.
The CRA verified through subsequent testing by other licenses labs that Viridis had passed marijuana with aspergillus, which led the agency to distrusts the lab’s results on many other marijuana products. The recall caused major disruption and unexpected costs throughout the market, as the CRA required all recalled marijuana be retested prior to sale.
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Sean Hocking
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