Many people are misled by the term “organic CBD” into believing it is a guarantee of a healthier, better quality product. This is not always the case for several reasons. While marking a product as containing organic CBD oil can be great from a marketing perspective, you as a consumer should know what that mark does and doesn’t entail, and how it can easily leave you with substandard, albeit “organic” CBD products.
The USDA Organic Certification Program
In the United States, organic certification of foods and other agricultural products is regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture. This program is meant to give consumers confidence that they’re getting what they pay for by ensuring that certified products meet a minimum standard. Whether it’s organic carrots or organic CBD, here’s what the distinctions mean:
- 100% Organic—A product that is certified 100% organic has met the USDA’s strictest requirements and contains only ingredients that are certified organic. This includes both ingredients grown by the manufacturers and any ingredients purchased from other suppliers for inclusion in the product.
- USDA Certified Organic—Products labeled Certified Organic must contain at least 95% certified organic ingredients. From growers and processors to handlers and shippers, the USDA certifies the process regularly at every step of the journey to verify organic standards are met and maintained.
- Organic—For products labeled organic, no synthetic chemicals, pesticides, insecticides, or fertilizers can be used. The product cannot contain GMO ingredients, have been irradiated, or have artificial additives. While this is often mistaken for USDA certified, rather than regular certification of all facilities and processes, only an inspection is made of the facilities involved in growing, processing, or handling the product.
- Made With Organic Ingredients—In order to label a product with this distinction, 70% of the ingredients in a product must be certified as at least organic.
Is Organic CBD Safer or More Natural?
While many people think that’s what an organic certification mark from the USDA means, unfortunately, that’s not the case.
- The Percentages Don’t Always Add Up—Despite the term “100% Organic” sounding like it means, well, 100%, each ingredient merely has to be Certified Organic, or 95% from organic sources. The more ingredients you have, the more that stray 5% in an organic CBD oil product adds up to look like less than 100% of the total being truly organic in nature. That 5% per ingredient is packed with hidden ingredients that are unaccounted for. They may not appear on the label of your product, and the manufacturer themselves may not have a listing from the supplier that identifies it—especially if it has its own 5% discrepancy to worry about.
- No Chemicals Doesn’t Always Mean No Chemicals—Peracetic acid doesn’t sound like an organic chemical, and it isn’t—it’s synthetic. Despite the organic designation, the USDA maintains a list of synthetic and non-synthetic chemicals you can use on crops and still get organic certification.
- In addition, the certification only judges the processes and actions by the growers, processors, and handlers, but not inadvertent exposure. If a neighboring field is sprayed, and the wind blows chemicals onto an organic CBD field, it is still considered organic. If the groundwater is contaminated with chemical runoff that then contaminates an organic crop, the crop is still organic. While this is done to avoid being unfair to producers for actions of other farmers they can’t control, the practical result is crops being certified organic despite exposure to synthetic chemicals.
- It Doesn’t Address Processing or Quality Standards—If you went to a restaurant with a facility that was certified clean, but the cook didn’t wash his hands, you would not feel like you were getting safe food preparation. In much the same way, organic certification looks at the ingredients, not at the final processes, leaving a lot of room for contaminants to enter the picture, potentially harming you.
What Does Naturally Grown Mean?
Rather than spending significant money to pursue a USDA certification for Organic CBD, we make sure our growers supply us with CBD-rich naturally grown hemp. It means that the industrial hemp we use comes from farms where the growers do not use any synthetic herbicides or insecticides on their crops. They use natural crop management techniques to get the best yield and quality possible. Once the plants are ready for harvest, leaves, stems, and flowers are shipped to our Colorado processing facility. Our professionals wear specialized suits in clean-room environments to process our hemp on pharmaceutical-grade machines to limit any risk of contamination.
Throughout this journey, rigorous testing is done in-house and by third-party independent labs to verify both the purity and potency of our product. This ensures you get high-quality CBD without THC that could make you high. It also ensures that we’re delivering a product that has avoided as much chemical contamination as possible.
Do You Use Other Organic Ingredients?
Organic isn’t all bad, but people need to know what the term does and doesn’t mean. We select all of our ingredients based on the high quality they deliver, whatever certification they may have. If one of our products includes an ingredient that is organic, we’re proud to say so, but we always choose quality first. By starting with premium ingredients, we’re able to deliver a premium CBD product that meets your health and wellness needs. Our products’ reputations for excellence speak for themselves.
When you choose CBD as your path to health and wellness, make sure you’re giving it the best CBD possible, and don’t be taken in by the marketing jargon of “organic CBD” products. Instead, choose potency, purity, and effectiveness in a form that works with your daily lifestyle. If you have any questions about our products or processes, call our customer service department to talk to one of our CBD experts at 888-506-1501. Get your CBD from CoreCBD today.
