Why we third-party test every batch
Hemp is an agricultural product. Every batch is different. Here is what that means, and why every Elixir formula gets sent to an independent lab before it ships.
Hemp is an agricultural product. That means every batch — every harvest, every extraction — is a little different from the last. Cannabinoid concentrations drift. Trace contaminants vary by soil and weather and the dozens of small things that happen between seed and bottle. Even a small operator working with a single farm sees this variance batch to batch.
That variance is the reason third-party testing exists.
What independent testing actually catches
A reputable cannabis testing lab runs a standardized panel against every sample we send. The five things they care about, in roughly the order they matter for a topical formula:
- Cannabinoid potency — verifies the CBD, CBG, and Δ9-THC numbers match what we put on the label.
- Heavy metals — lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury are the four standard checks. Hemp is a bioaccumulator: it pulls metals out of the soil into the plant. We need to know the levels are well under action limits.
- Pesticides — full multi-residue panel.
- Microbial — total yeast, mold, and aerobic bacteria.
- Residual solvents — anything that survived the extraction process, measured against pharmacopeia thresholds.
The first one is what most brands talk about. The other four are why you actually pay for the test.
How we publish results
Every batch we ship has a unique batch ID printed on the package. That batch ID resolves to a Certificate of Analysis — the full lab PDF — on our Lab page. Open it, search your batch ID, click through.
If the lab finds something out of spec, that batch doesn't ship. There is no second opinion, no retest with a friendlier lab. It gets destroyed and we run a new one.
What this costs
Independent lab testing adds a real per-batch cost to the unit economics. We absorb it as a fixed part of the cost of goods. If you're shopping the hemp aisle and the price difference between two similar topicals is meaningful, one likely explanation is that one of them isn't paying for this.
You don't have to take our word for any of this. The COA for your specific batch is the artifact.