Audits for Success – Helping You Achieve the End Goal
There are many instances where an audit of your cannabis business is called for. Whether it’s in your journey to becoming a Licence Holder (LH) under the Cannabis Regulations, your mission to become EU-GMP certified or wanting to ensure your cannabis business is on track - audits add huge value to helping achieve your end goal.
Across Canada, many cannabis businesses are making fundamental mistakes that can delay or even stop them from being successful. Mistakes can range from minor to critical and everywhere in between and here we highlight some common mistakes being made throughout the industry.
Common areas that gaps are being identified during audits:
- Executive level buy-in – this one can make or break a cannabis business. Company executives must buy-in to the quality culture. Seek to understand and respect your Quality Assurance Person (QAP). Don’t allow business decisions to compromise product safety.
- Training – often overlooked is the importance of investing in the training of your team. A lack of knowledge of current regulations, proper growing techniques and Health Canada reporting protocols are resulting in some big mistakes.
- Supplier Monitoring – a supplier monitoring program is often not executed to its full potential. Inadequate supplier monitoring can result in many problems for your business including: poor quality product, breaches to the regulations and cannabis strain inconsistencies. These issues can result in batch destruction or product recall.
- Quality Management System (QMS) – the most common gap we’ve seen is the QMS not being robust enough to meet the required standard. Identifying missing programs and procedures late in the game can delay the licensing and/or certification process by months. Many programs and procedures take months to fully execute so the earlier in the process that these are identified the better.
- Bad Habits – personnel who have entered the regulated cannabis space from the unregulated cannabis space can bring bad habits to the job - often passionate and creative individuals bring the ‘tricks of the trade’ with them. However, if not in line with regulatory requirements and documented thoroughly for record keeping, they could put the QMS at risk, and in a worse case even lead to full batch destruction if assessed by Health Canada and found to be contrary to GPP. It is crucial these employees understand the regulated environment and the regulations they must adhere to.
The above gaps are just a few to name. Whether you are an applicant or a Licence Holder, taking the initiative to have your business audited for regulatory compliance is a needed step in the process that can accelerate your journey to success and catch errors before they perpetuate in the QMS.
CCI offers a wide range of auditing services including; Pre-Sales Mock Audits, EU-GMP Gap Assessments, Due-Diligence Audits, Targeted Inspections, Edibles Manufacturing Audits and Quality Investigations. We find the gaps so Canadian and International regulators don’t. Contact us today.
Written by: Shaun Mc Gowan, Audit Manager, Cannabis Compliance Inc.
