We all have encountered various companies that claim that they work to particular standards and leverage these standards to a certain degree to gain customer confidence. Rarely do we ask ourselves, what are these standards? How does a company gain the right to display that they are certified? What difference does this certification to the quality of the product that I am purchasing?
What is CUMCS-GAP?
CUMCS is an acronym for “Control Union Medical Cannabis Standard”, this union acts as a sort of ‘council’, if you will, which is globally recognized for ensuring the consistency of the highest quality cannabis products. Since the relaxing of laws of so many countries across the globe, the demand for medicinal cannabis has substantially increased. Like any product, this can create risks from a business perspective, there needs to be steps put in place to protect consumers from being sold underwhelming and potentially harmful product.
The CUMCS-GAP has been developed and modelled on a number of international industry leading accreditations, in order to maintain the highest level of quality assurance and consistency for the cultivation of cannabis ensuring a global standard is able to be monitored and maintained.
As more countries are opening up to cannabis use for medical purposes, governments are quickly realising that there needs to be controlled measures put in place.
There are a number of reasons that this needs to happen:
- To ensure that people that have prescriptions for cannabinol products are receiving consistent, safe products that will not harm them.
- Research carried out by laboratories and universities can have an expected standard of cannabis to conduct studies for medical gains.
- Having a board to audit facilities to ensure that safe practices are maintained, on a regular basis.
- It improves documentation and traceability of products for all parties involved.
What is CUMCS-GAP Accreditation Based On And How Was it Developed?
As medical cannabis has been available in Israel since the early 1990’s, CUMCS-GAP Accreditation has been benchmarked to the Israeli Medical Cannabis Standard (IMC-GAP) due to its rigorous regulation and standards. As a result, CUMCS-GAP accreditation has been accepted and recognised by the Israeli Medical Cannabis Agency (IMCA) Ministry for Health, for all imports of medicinal cannabis into Israel. This is obviously of huge benefit to anyone with CUMCS-GAP Accreditation.
The CUMCS-GAP Accreditation was developed bearing in mind 4 more standards of practice also:
- The World Health Organisation (WHO) Guidelines: WHO Guidelines on Good Agricultural & Collection Practices (GACP) for Medicinal Plants – Geneva 2003
- European Medicines Agency (EMA GACP): guideline on Good Agricultural and Collection Practice (GACP) for starting materials of herbal origin (July 2005);
- Guidelines of the Dutch Government for Cannabis for Medical Use: Guidelines for cultivating cannabis for medicinal purposes, Nederland, December 2002;
- International Standard for Good Agriculture Practice: GLOBALG.A.P. IFA 4.0 (FV), March 2013.
Cannathai CBD Solutions Working Towards CUMCS-GAP Accreditation
Cannathai CBD Solutions are currently working towards garnering our CUMCS-GAP certification. Our business partners are in regular contact with the CUMCS and are going through the application process which is quite lengthy and requires multiple inspections of our facilities throughout the course of the year before certification can be benefited to a company. We are expecting we will have completed the application process and gain our certification by early 2024 at the latest.
Everything You Need to Know About CUMCS-GAP
With the rapid expansion of the cannabis industry globally, it is important for both commercial and consumers to stay educated about best practices in order to know where to access the best possible quality cannabis for medicinal purposes. CUMCS-GAP covers medical Cannabis propagation, cultivation and post-harvest processes and is fully compliant with both the World Health Organisation and European Medicines Agency GACP guidelines. Certified organizations will receive both CUMCS-GAP certificate and GACP compliance certificates for both the WHO as well as EMA GACP guidelines.
We look forward to keeping you up to date with our developments in our certification process!
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