When the largest-ever Michigan marijuana recall was issued on Wednesday, Nov. 17, Matt Imig’s phone began ringing. Customers were calling.
Imig, who owns M&M Agriculture, a comparably small, 1,000-plant licensed marijuana grow facility in Lansing, uses Viridis Laboratories, the target of the recall, for all of his mandated safety testing. Consequently, every ounce of the 42 pounds of marijuana he’s sold to three retail customers, worth roughly $75,000 retail, is on hold. It must now either be destroyed or retested. Who will pay for additional testing and product loss is still being sorted out.
“A lot of us in this are just mom-and-pop shops,” said Imig. “I have my life savings invested in this and trying to make it. I guess, the one thing you ask for in all this is that if you’re going to make these huge decisions that have ramifications that can destroy some people, that it comes the right way.”
Imig feels companies like his own are collateral damage in a behind-the-scenes battle between powerful labs being refereed by the Marijuana Regulatory Agency (MRA) with little regard for financial fallout that may crush industry players.
Questions over the validity of testing conducted by Viridis, a state-licensed marijuana safety lab with locations in Lansing and Bay City, resulted in an unspecified amount of marijuana being recalled late in the business day on Nov. 17. The MRA called tests conducted by Viridis “inaccurate” or “unreliable.” [Read More @ MLive]
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