February 11, 2025 • 49 mins
Keeping cannabis clean is more critical than ever. In this episode, I sit down with Joe Edwards, Chief Science Officer at Yofumo Technologies, to discuss the game-changing role of decontamination in the cannabis industry.
We dive into:
✅ The hidden contamination risks in cannabis cultivation
✅ How Yofumo’s ozone-based technology is revolutionizing decontamination
✅ The tightening of compliance and new testing regulations
✅ How cultivators can stay ahead of the curve and avoid costly recalls
✅ The future of cannabis decontamination beyond cultivation
With over 15 years of experience in cannabis science and innovation, Joe shares his deep insights on facility design, regulatory challenges, and industry best practices. If you care about the future of clean, safe, and high-quality cannabis, this episode is a must-watch!
📢 Watch now and stay informed on the latest cannabis science and compliance trends!
===================
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
321. Cannabinoid connect,
the nation's most diversecannabis related podcast.
And here we go, Joe.
(00:21):
It's great to have you, man.
It's been a pleasure just talking to you.
Off recording and, Yeah,it's a pleasure to have you.
You as well, man.
And thank you for having me on.
Do a little bit of background research.
And I got a lot, been really interestedin a couple of the companies.
You had only a couple of speakersyou've had on, especially
within the last yearor so, and I didn't dive back too far.
(00:43):
But really, like the machinefocus, the tech focus,
kind of fits, well, my niche.
I'm I'm a super nerd.
You were telling me earlier.
I mean, you're the you're the mathwhiz in the house.
Well, of course,your wife has other strengths that, keep
you guys simpatico and whatnot,but it's funny because I never,
(01:03):
was the, math or science whiz.
That wasI was always on the communications side.
Surprising Lee. Right.
And if you had told me, well,
almost 20 years ago, and I wasI was graduating the first time,
I was sure that,my career focus would be cannabis.
(01:24):
I laughed,
mostly because I was paying for my collegefor cannabis.
But, that I would get to spend
most of my days,
playing with one of the coolest puzzles
I've ever got a chance to dive into.
And that's kind of honestly,one of the things that's
kind of interested in cannabisfor so long is
(01:46):
I haven't found the bottom of the pool.
Right? Right. Yeah.
I mean, if you're
if you're into problem solving,this is the industry for you for sure.
Because, I mean, you have itnot only on the scientific level,
which we'll get into today,you know, in terms of decon
decontamination, practicesand whatnot post-harvest.
(02:08):
But, you know,the fact that even politically,
you know, there's like a chess gameand there's there's,
you know, different waysin which and regulations
you got to go about and figure things outbecause it's ever changing.
So it's just it's, it's it'sa very interesting space ever changing.
And it'sI think 38 simultaneous chess games.
(02:28):
Now at this point,there's only a few holdovers left
of all the different,all with their own unique qualities.
And microcosms.
And that that's been fun.
And it's I don't know, although,
Travel does get old to to an extent.
The unfortunate part isyou only fly into cool places,
(02:51):
and then you drive about an hourand a half away
from them to the middle of nowhere.
That's where tends to take this,where every once in a while possible.
I'm sorry.
In Massachusetts, you get to hang outaround Boston in kind of a small state,
but, there's a magical momentwhere you fly into,
what was the airport?
Southern California.
The sand. Sand? Something.
(03:13):
Anyway,and then you drive to the San Jose.
No, no, no.
And the,
bubble.
All right.
Anyway, when everyone'son the edge of the Mojave Desert,
because that'swhere you end up driving to.
And there is a quick stop,the hotel that you're staying at,
(03:34):
a diner
that has been there sinceand I don't think has been painted
or renovated since, obviously, 1908,something
and you're
trying to find the facility and you can't,and then you realize
it's been buried undergroundand shipping containers for the.
Oh, know,
(03:54):
but not quite deep enough.
So there's a problem.
Well, that's a good like thatbrings up a good point.
Like, what do you what do you all doto entertain yourself besides, like,
probably consume the product and bond,but like, you'd have to kind of stay busy
and stay entertained in those rural areaswhere there's not much going on right?
(04:15):
So I've kind of developed
to travel hobbies, we'll call it one,
but I never willbring my wife back into it, I guess.
She helps with one of them.
I become a foodie.
If you have a local cuisine, a hotspot,
a five star review on Yelp,I'm going to end up there.
Does the diner?
(04:35):
I like that I'm with that.
Yes, it's been cool.
Because those are out there.
Those hole in the walls are everywhere,especially those small towns.
I mean,you just got to ask the right people
or, you know, find the right, ratingon, like, you said, Google or Yelp.
And it's amazing experience, but you wouldhave some really, really cool things.
(04:56):
I didn't realizeDetroit had an amazing food scene.
I grew up in Ohio.
I mean,my view of Detroit was always, well,
we had Michigan, so,
it's not their fault.
When we didget another national championship,
I guess it's been a few decades for them,but in some sense.
All right, we don't brag too much.
(05:17):
Humblebrag, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, well.
So tell me, Joe. Like what?
What did youhow did you get started in this space?
I mean, like you said,
you know, you neverwould have really saw yourself in college
to now kind of making this trajectorybeing a science guy.
But it was it the challenges andthe problem solving that intrigued you?
(05:38):
Is it that you were a previous consumerand you saw the the value and the
benefit of the plant?
Yeah.
Weirdly enough, total opposite,
grew up through Ohio farm life and
you get about age
12, 13 growing up and working on a farm
(06:00):
where, man, you just want to run awayas fast as humanly possible.
On on my grandfather in conversation,one of these days.
Well, having run around the worldto not be a farmer,
to be a farmer.
But now,
grew up in a deep agriculturalbackground, had a really kind of.
(06:23):
Soil up understanding of
cultivation in a sense
of preservation.
Not necessarily the cornand soy that Ohio's so known for, but,
you know, kind of the farmer's market,vegetable fresh, farm to table produce
and always had a big appreciation for it.
(06:44):
But initially went to collegebecause I want to design video games.
Computer science engineeringwas the first one through
and meant did I hate it?
I absolutely couldn't stand it.
I needed about nine months,in my first year employment.
And, I figured outexactly how long I would have to be there.
(07:05):
And that's when I started working me.
Is it because of just,
the repetitive task of, like,just sitting at a desk and,
like, programing and code,and it was absolute monotony.
And you kind of had that view or premise.
Boy came out roughly about that time,and you had this view of video
game design, and it's not,and you only need to do that off the bat.
(07:28):
You get to sit in a little 3.5ftby three and a half by 3.5ft
break cubicle and,you know, an hour lunch break.
That's about the highlights.
And there was it was fun because it was
logic and Boolean based logic,and it was something I excelled at and,
(07:49):
I realized that I'd turned something
that I loved into something that I bored.
I would come home from workand I would sit down
and I wouldn't touch an electronic device.
You can see behind me,
I never saw your. Yeah.
Your collection is pretty impressivethere.
It took over the years.
(08:09):
Mostly because they're heavyand hard to move, and.
But that became my catharsis.
So I started thinking aboutwhat was the next step I'd,
at that point in time,felt like I had, in a sense, failed,
but knew that I had skills,knew that I had ideas
I knew I wanted to do,I knew what I didn't want to do,
(08:32):
and that that was probably the bigger onewas finding out all the things
that I didn't want to do and all
the things that I thought would suit mebut didn't, and went back on the college
path again, went into education,
thought I was suited for English,and almost turned another love
into something that I didn't want to do,and just took a giant step back.
(08:55):
And then
realized that there was somethingI'd been doing all the time
that I didn't really understand.
Okay.
Having financed
my college careerthrough private horticultural endeavors,
we became allegedly orphans.
Yeah.
Yeah, allegedly. And spent most,
(09:16):
you know, mostly,
Oh, but having realized that
there was something that.
I hadn't explored yet,
and initially it was.
How can.
I relate cultivation
how can I relate to productionof a given biomass to benefit?
(09:41):
And at that point in time,it was it was monetary.
But again, trying to bring things backaround to that,
that form either roll up or you.
How can that benefit
humanity?
Society.
And sort started looking at cannabis.
And at that point in time
there was no medical researchand completely prohibition era.
(10:04):
Not even really academic outside of hemp
and a few unique programsthat a couple of universities
but there was a
plethora of knowledge on was.
Both organic compound production.
And I started studying cut flowers.
(10:24):
Autism lilies were actually,the first kind of deep dive for me.
And that brought me to soil mechanics.
Soil mechanics brought me into lightingspectrum.
Lighting spectrum brought me to atmospherecontrol.
Atmosphere control brought meto fertilization and nutrient control.
(10:45):
And it kept diving and divingand diving and diving in.
And I didn't really knowwhere I was going with it.
I was kind of
spinning my wheels through continualeducation, not knowing what
I was going to do with all this timeand money that I invested.
And then right about 2009,
when Colorado legalized medical marijuana,
(11:05):
my wife looked at me and goes,
she read off the bottom,
let's move to Colorado.
Really?
And I was taken aback
because outsideof going to college in Pittsburgh,
she was not a traveler and explorer,
but I had that when I was younger. But.
(11:27):
I kind of flabbergasted.
But it really was
that eureka epiphany moment for me that
I obviously have a passion to the degreethat my partner
is willing to uproot herselfto make that change.
Certainly convenient,
you know, being an artistand not a whole lot to tie you down.
(11:48):
Well, this may surprise you,but Ohio does not
have what we call a robust art scene.
All of a sudden, oh, I know, amazing.
But that's amazing that she,
you know, was so open and supportive,like right off the bat, right?
I mean,especially because this industry comes
with some baggage in terms of the stigmaaround the plant, right?
(12:11):
I mean, I know that that's kind of,
this disappearingas there's more public support,
but especially probably at that time,
you know, your wife saw the opportunity,she knew your skill set.
And she's like, let's do this thing. And.
Yeah, it's spot on.
And it gave me
(12:32):
it gave me a lot of courage in that.
But to your point, you're absolutely rightthat there was a long time
where there was a horrible stigmato working in cannabis.
I know several individuals who werein those, you know, opening years through
oh nine in the recreational hitand 14 in Colorado.
And, you know, it was the Port Amsterdamof the restoration of humanity, etc..
(12:53):
Amsterdam, the East. But.
We kind of grown out of that, to a sense.
I guess, to a degree.
Sorry, the back,but I kind of got lost a memory.
A great friend of mine,
who actually worked for youth,
(13:14):
for quite some time, as well as one of ourassembly techs on the Dell technicians.
After we both kind of movedout of cannabis cultivation,
had a lot
of difficulty going back home to Florida
and getting a quote unquote normal job,because six years of his resume
had been an illicit industryand border was not permissible.
(13:34):
Had a lot of trouble, actually, no.
He since pivoted that into a lot of salesbased research
to kind of think tank based researchand project management
and kind of really made the better of itthere.
But it's crazy to think that we'venow kind of come all the way through.
The looking me was,
I remember telling my parents that,I was cultivating cannabis for a living.
(13:57):
That was an incredibly interestingconversation.
Yeah.
How did they how did they, take that?
Well, I found out my mom smokes weed.
Okay. All right.
Not good weed.
So you're like, mom, like,
hey, let me help you out here.
(14:18):
Yeah. And,
my dad,my dad said something along the lines of,
if you do something like thiswith you, eventually.
Well, then they weren't so surprised.
That's a good thing.
Then it was your calling, Joe.
But I,
I feel so, but no, it was it was, again,really encouraging on top of that, that
(14:42):
all of the new kind of key peoplein my life and my parents, my partner,
were supportive of
what was in every way the outsideof a couple of counties in Colorado.
And if you went too far down70, federally listed.
So there it was in Colorado.
But it was it was a huge risk. And
(15:03):
probably one of the biggest onesI've ever taken.
And there was great reward.
I, I couldn't be happier.
Well, that's that's amazing to hear.
I always love a good, you know,success story and you're still in it.
Right.
And so I think this is a good segueto talk about, you know, the real focus
in what you are doing in terms of,you know, addressing the issue
(15:28):
of keeping cannabis cleanand and addressing contamination risks.
So I guess a way to start this is like,just tell us about the impact
of contaminationon product quality, compliance
and even consumer health.
(15:48):
Oh man.
That's a fun little deep dive.
You want to start with some scary
or something upsetting?
I could go either way.
All right, let's go.
Upsetting.
All right, here's something upsetting.
(16:09):
Because of microbial regulationsand how tests are delineated
with no speciation on most used animals,
it is near impossible to use
a plethora of organic cultivationmethodologies.
Microbial teas,deepwater cultivation, living
soil,any programmatic or probiotic additives.
(16:32):
Because the test sampleshows a total count.
Not of this bad.
Now if it's good, no.
And a lot of labshave kind of developed their PCR, PCR,
IQ assays to really focus on
what are pathogenic yeasts and molds.
(16:52):
However, there's still a horrible
discrepancy in how we test samples.
We utilize PCR I PCR two,which is thermal cycler rapid.
We doing unit DNA sequencesand kind of extrapolating out
what could beand performing that combination perform
and extrapolationat an incredibly rapid rate.
(17:14):
And there are other labsthat use plate based
intubation methods using and three trigger
takes days at a time,
but it's near impossible to count
some.
And this has become a lessprevalent practice.
But some labs still usewhat they call stone plate analysis,
(17:36):
which is where you print outa piece of film, you put it over the plate
and there's a random dispersion,
dots, colored segments.
And that'swhat you look at under the microscope.
And where ever that happens to fallis what you count.
And then you multiply it by whateverthe delta is.
(17:56):
So that's 10% of the total area.
And then you multiply up to 100.
The dotsmay show dead in the middle of the colony.
They show absolutelyin the middle of nowhere,
completely unreliable.
Then when you couple that with the ideathat in most cases
sample size is not representativeharvest batch, I eat,
(18:18):
you can submit 7 to 14g in
some states, and that's representativeof hundreds of pounds of microbes.
Don't distributeevenly over numerous cultivars plants.
And just like people,have varying degrees of susceptibility
and even within the samegenome disease and chemo type,
we still see a huge range.
(18:38):
And what could potentially be healthierunhealthy?
Where is it in the room?
I was intrigued.
Did it get in this water?
Did it get light? Burn there?
Just simply not have enough airflowto prevent used in Moldova?
Did it see a contaminationbased on improperly treated soil media?
All of these things can happen.
(18:58):
So right next to healthy plant,you can have a contaminated plant.
Now what?
Random spatial samplingis supposed to help alleviate this?
It's completely inaccurateto what you may or may not have.
Okay.
So I'm goingto I'm trying to try to follow you here
because you are very science based,which I appreciate.
(19:19):
But you got to give grace to guys like me.
So it sounds like what you're saying isbecause there is discrepancies
within microbial testing across the board,there's kind of like not, a standard
if people kind of do their own testingmethods.
There's a lot of inaccuracieswhen it comes to the final results
(19:39):
and kind of how we can regulate.
And even the regulation is off.
You're saying as well,because of these testing methods,
part and parcel and all, but
a little bit.
Less than two.
There are multiple methodsthat are accredited.
(20:02):
There'sno standard for what method to use.
Okay.
Oftentimes it's based on laboratoryequipment, personnel training and ability
abilities, funding state requirements,and to a degree.
What they use, however,
is what we now call lab shopping.
(20:26):
Yeah.
If you notice, there's nothing like that.
Well, let's go to lab.
They might use a different chemicallast data for their PCR.
They might use a differentanalytical method
that might be more beneficial to you.
So this creates a potential issue herefor consumer health.
And then from the other sidewe have a sample size.
(20:48):
But our replicate that
while
attempting to be
a representation of the batchor the harvest
often should very short.
Now here's the upsetting one.
One of the things they can fallshort on is Aspergillus Niger.
(21:11):
No little bit better of black mold.
This can occur in cannabis.
Yes. The thing
that will send you out of your home,the thing and the cause.
Aspergillosisand multiple pulmonary respiratory impacts
can occur does occur in cannabis.
And I've heardI did some research as well.
(21:31):
And I heard one of the podcaststhat you were previously on, but
it was in 2023 and I was kind of shockedby the percentage that was thrown out.
It was, I think you saidor someone said on the podcast, 60%
of of cannabis products at the time,
like had some type of contaminationor I don't know
if it was mold, but likeand those are even legal.
(21:55):
I think I can remember that statistic.
The increase in incubation time from48 to 72 hours
resulted in an additional 60%failure of sample set,
which means that simply giving ita little bit more time to mature
and cultivate resulted in a massive
increase in failure rate.
(22:18):
I see,
so when it was post-harvest,it was probably okay within the threshold.
But then as they tried to cure and drivefor the extended period
is when contamination increased andyou can't hit the nail on the head there.
We do see the most abundant and rapid
microbial expansionduring drying maturation phases.
(22:43):
And the way I try to explain it to
or kind of bring clients into itas we start talking
about contamination, as we start talkingabout facility health and biosecurity,
is that
in a sense you can look at it
as a parasite host relationship,
the microbe being the parasite,the plant being host.
(23:05):
While possibleand in common circumstances,
we don't really seem incredibly high
microbial counts on living plants
are obviously exceptions
to the rule, and Botrytis may occur.
Results have sections that may exist.
(23:26):
A systemic issue,you know, becomes a play in that.
But in general, with healthy plants,healthy crops and stable cultivars
is very rare to see microbial countsin excess of a few thousand.
Part of the reason is,
is the microbe isn't desperate.
It still has room to spread.
(23:47):
It's got plenty of fuelfrom a chemical level, water
being fuel or carbon based life,
and it's not really worriedabout its own existence.
Now, the moment you cut that plant down,it now has a finite amount of resources.
As far as the microbesand certain parasites concerned.
So like most life on the planet,
(24:08):
when it sees the incoming year, it triesto replicate and spreads fast as it can.
Now we also look at
the difference in climate changebetween cultivation environments,
post-harvest environments,which is one of the things that actually
brought us to kind ofdeveloping the technology for your food.
They can often be incredibly different.
(24:28):
They can often be abrupt and changein temperature and humidity.
But even more than that,
we're taking the plant out of the crib
or moving it through a warehousewhere we're touching it.
We're handling it.
Even with proper PPE and propersanitization.
Humans are filthy and us toxic things as
(24:51):
typically not good.
So that was kind
of one of the conceptsthat really led us to, you know, thermo.
And if we rewind the clock now again, backto, you know, that 2014 is ERA,
we see a lot of differences
in how cultivation environmentsare constructed and operated.
(25:13):
There wasn't the purpose built technologythat now exists.
Ten years agowe were using Hvac units from server farms
and they were great at shedding heat,horrible taking care of moisture.
We were using whitening systemsfrom the flour industry,
and we're absolutely a corollarynot designed and spectrum
(25:34):
penetration of canopy.
We were using soil mediums
across the board.
Peat moss, proterra, purple noir grown
coconut crossed through dirt, living soil,
clay, beans,
spun lava, rock, all kinds of things.
(25:55):
Trying to figure out what was best.
And as we began to progressedthrough that cultivation phase,
as we really started to developthose technologies for the industry,
they became a huge gap inwhat was being put into
pre harvest phases,living phases and post-harvest phase.
So now we have an industry that is hyperfocused on how can we produce big
(26:20):
this plant
best plant, highest volatileorganic compound flower
turbines, flavonoids, cannabinoidslargest buds.
What can we do from an anthocyaninreaction to make things purple?
I'll kinds of cool things are happening.
But then we're cutting down the plantand we're going back to the Stone age.
(26:41):
We're putting things in buckets, binswhere we're shaking them.
They're going to closets with a humidifierfrom Home
Depot.
Right.
And then
as we got a lot of room for error, rightin, in that, in that type of process.
So this is another great segue.
(27:01):
So I mean, that seems likethere was a clear opportunity
that there was a needthat was needed to be filled.
Right.
And so your fumo talk to meabout its differentiator, because I know
that you have some type of ozonebased decontamination system.
We absolutely do.
And it's a cool methodology.
(27:22):
Wasn't always kind of designed that way.
Like, you know, kind of goingfrom that modernization
to a we revert to Stone age.
Originally we wanted to do curation.
We wanted to foster the bias biosynthesisreaction in a stable and hermetic way.
That post-harvest phase,that dry, that cured how can we do that?
(27:44):
How can we accelerate it?
How can we bring consistencyto this product?
And so it's no longer a bean and bucketburping system
kind of arbitrary to someone's nose.
Did it go too long to shortwhat happens in the process.
So that was kind of the original thought.
And that led us to the idea that, well.
(28:07):
How do we maintain that environment?
Okay. We can build from attic chamber,
but our chamber is only a chamber.
What if the cannabis itselfalready has it?
Contamination?
Unfortunately, a lot of the variablesthat control curation,
two primary onesbeing temperature, humidity,
are also the ones that controlmicrobial extraction to a high degree.
(28:31):
So if there's something there,we're only going to exacerbate the issue.
So this brought us kind ofto a compliance question.
And there was kind of a weird occurrencein the industry at the time.
Colorado,for whatever reason, decided to implement
microbialtesting for recreational cannabis,
(28:52):
not medical.
Well, medical didn't require that.
So seeing
those regulations come through,knowing us really well,
where we wanted to focus the technology,because there wasn't anybody
really developing in the sectorat that time for harvest,
we started looking compliance.
And we looked at complianceas we looked at
(29:15):
FDA statutes for foods, vegetables,
leafy greens, and kind of lookingat the development thereof
and how those industries really came upand where those standardization came from.
And looking at the ASTM standards and
what is the threshold for compliance?
(29:36):
I, I probably read the EU,GMP Pharmacopeia as well as the U.S.
Army appropriate,
man, more times than I care
to think about, but
it's really what provides the basis
for standardization, safety, health
and what cannabisis really taking a recreational turn.
(29:56):
It was originally,and still was in some places,
a medical only product.
So we're looking at medical product.
Then we need to look at consumer health,consumer safety, viability.
And this is again back to compliance.
One of the thingsthat became very apparent very quickly
(30:17):
is that pretty muchevery agricultural industry
has a means of sanitization of the biomassof their cultivating, be it or dioxide.
Read the large radiation exposure, be it
pastures, pasteurization,there's something there.
There's a control step that is implemented
(30:40):
en masse without question.
So we looked forward and
it was a scary look to a degree,
because we didn't really knowhow we were going to accomplish that.
We knew the gases exposure,
something like chlorine dioxide,which works great with your fruits
(31:03):
and vegetablesand soft ground, hard right objects
because you can rinse itbecause you can wash it.
There's very little riskof remaindered chemical compound
or really any risks to the humanbiome with proper usage.
Always wash your fruits and vegetables.
By the way, yes.
(31:24):
But we also saw that when you looked at
what the global scale was doing, that
a lot of these things were being
regulated in to extension.
Foreign dioxidereally wasn't a viable methodology
for anybody producing an organic productor an heirloom product.
(31:44):
Certain EU countries had already began
limiting its permissibility.
Look at radiation.
And that's a really wonderful technologyin a lot of ways.
The grain industry would bein a very different place without it.
But we also kind of startedagainst the idea of radiation.
(32:08):
So we started looking atwhat's the scale of contamination.
And at that point in time,there wasn't really a huge definitive list
like there is,
for most environments now,
we were just looking at a rogue bacteria.
We were just looking at totalyeast and mortality,
and we were looking for a few otherbig things.
We're looking for colon.We're looking for Stec.
(32:30):
Things that we knew to be absolutepathogenic, harmful.
There's a lot more not more than that.
And we've kind of developed through there.
Now we test for aerobicand throw the gram negative bio
tolerant toward yeast and mold coliformPseudomonas various Aspergillus variant.
So that's really cool and stuff.
(32:51):
But it's kind of reallybecome much more robust in what we look at
and what is in the realm of turns.
So we took that as notes and of looking
at, okay, how can we interact with this?
And we reallylike ozone in the sense that.
It's readily available,
(33:12):
is cheap in the sense of.
Equipment design
and build doesn't break apart.
When you look at systems like Z
or systems like source,they can be incredibly expensive
and they're highly calibrated sciencemachines.
It makes perfect sense.
(33:34):
A lot of cultivators don't necessarily
have a huge chunk of disposable income.
When I think the falsehoods
that's kind of existent in the cannabisindustry is,
it just makes money hand over fist.
And that was not truein a lot of places for some time.
(33:56):
But it's become like every othervery industry, highly competitive and
highly controlled because it's a commodityand not like commodities
becoming close to federally available.
So with that in mind,
I kind of moved back from radiation.
(34:17):
That kind of struckus back in the drawing board
because there was
at that time,no way that ozone was really being used
to interactwith the gamut of microbial contaminants
that we that we needed to.
So the idea became,
is there a way that we can achieve
(34:39):
with ozone, a similar result to radiation?
Specifically ionic radiation.
So we were looking atwhat does it do to cellular structure.
It's disruption of the cells,
corruption of the DNA.
It's true death on that to that regard.
(34:59):
It's it's in our carbon at that point.
And we thought we could.
So we kind of went back to ozone,
but we sort of looking at itin a different way,
instead of looking at ozonethrough a lens of what's called
atmospheric deprivation,probably enough ozone to open fire
(35:21):
in space, where you kill everythingacross the appropriate spectrum.
Spectrum needs oxygen to live.
Is there a way that
we could interact with more than that?
Now, here's problemnumber one ozone free radical oxidizer.
What that means is,is this completely non discriminant.
It doesn't carewhat interacts with interacts with
(35:44):
everything.
The encounters period and paragraph.
No. How does it reactbecomes the next question.
What's the threshold ozone requisite
to interact with yeasts
molds other microbial compoundsdevelop bacteria.
Is that threshold lower than the thresholdwhere we start seeing
(36:07):
cellular degradation of the plant itself,or we start seeing the decomposition
or oxidization of turbines for minerals,cannabinoids, volatile organic compounds.
The entire reasonwe grow and smell cannabis,
right.
And the answer isthe answer is yeah, yeah, it is lower.
And now the questionbecame how do you control it.
(36:30):
And there'sa couple ways that you can generate ozone.
Traditional ozone pumps convertx percent of atmospheric oxygen
based on pump sizebased on purity of feedstock.
2120 1.6% tends
to be the averagefor most commercial grade ozone pumps.
There are many.
They go higher.There's some that go lower.
(36:53):
But it's an on or off.
You're not regulating what is doing.
The machine works. Machine doesn't work.
You can't have turned the dial from 1to 100
and say,I only want you to convert this much.
You can feed it oxygen.
You can control what it's getting froma fuel standpoint, what it's converting.
(37:13):
And you can
approximate to a degree what it does.
But that wasn't going to be sufficient.
We weren't looking at the control
you know, plus or minus a few hundredplus or minus a few thousand.
We wanted to control to single ppm.
(37:33):
So we started looking at
other ways that ozone was generated.
One of the thingsthat we kind of stumbled upon
was do these three elements,
light bulbs.
So everything vibrates
UVC elements when powered.
(37:56):
Vibrate at a frequency
that actually creates ozoneor can vibrate to actually create suction.
So between about 183 and 207nanometer range,
you can those almost BBC elements.
It's stable between about 184
and 187 actually stable
(38:18):
within about 185,which is where we really kind of felt that
that sweet spot was for
production versus longevity.
And that was all fun and gamesand math on paper.
How do we actually do it?
So we went in search of someone
that could make this magic wand for us.
(38:41):
Stumbled upona company called Land Ultraviolet, which,
unbeknownst to us,
was one of the largest producersin the world of the genetic elements.
So they were obviously able to createfor us.
A completely proprietary
generation elementthat allowed us to control the exact
(39:02):
gram per minute per cubic footproduction of ozone within the unit.
And then it became
a game changer.
Six years, six years of researchfiguring out
contaminant X and Y.
And we did see reevaluation,third party evaluation.
(39:23):
Do we see degradation of VOCs?
We see degradation in box in third partyanalysis
EU GMP validation, see validation.
I essentially took the entire budgetfrom the companies
place a little over a decade and just sunkinto material science research.
I'm still getting some flack for that.
(39:46):
Well, I mean, you got to buildyou got to build the case studies, right?
You got to build the research tothen point back to kind of
provethat the mythology, methodology works.
And there has beensome success in the studies.
So I get why you and I.
And we had to we had to,you know, and we still do this every day.
Overcome some hurdles.
(40:07):
There's other ozoneproducing companies out there that utilize
different methodologies,that people have a degree of
negative,
Negative thoughts about,
and there's a lot of research around
(40:27):
all the terrible things ozone can do.
So we've had to kind of reallyprove our way every step of the way,
in the sense that even oncewe thought we had a robust system,
as we were going through our trial basisin our alpha and beta years,
we finally landed on what became our finalgo to market product.
We were never given the things to work,just, hey, try.
(40:51):
It means I hate to sound like a used carsalesman, but money back
guarantee like I that I knowwe know what we're doing,
but convincing peopleto put thousands of dollars
and we have a throughput capacity of 30 to50 pounds, depending on biomass density.
I mean, even if you take a
(41:12):
market like Coloradoand I think we're sitting
somewhere around 790 to 1100 a pound,
depending on the let's calla thousand flat rate math units,
and someone put 30 grand in the machine,you know, because you said it'll work.
It's not an easy conversation
(41:32):
I can imagine. Yeah.
So I mean,
do you see your firm's technology
maybe influencing agricultureand food safety across the board,
like as their plans to expand
to other industries?
Or are there other
applications beyond cannabis?
(41:55):
Absolutely.
One of our original founderswas was founded saying,
no one's going to pay us for cleantomatoes.
They already think they knowhow to do that.
We have to prove we can find something
that hasn't yet existed.
Cannabis was,you know, that that medium, obviously.
(42:15):
But we've been working
through some European partners doing seedbased decontamination, pre planting.
We've seen increases in germination.
We've seen higher decreasecrop uniformity.
We've seen lower rates of pathogenicresponse or pathogen contamination.
We've even seen dropsin systemic contamination
(42:38):
still very muchin the development stage. But.
Oh yeah absolutely.
I always kind of dreamed of the day where,
I can replace the fruit juicein your fridge with your food.
Much more.
You know, the idea always been.
(42:59):
Farms people produce is amazing.
But you also bring some of the farmsto your table.
Now, what if you could just stickthat in a drawer in your fridge
and within minutes,
you have farm to table, but
completely, absolutely sterile, clean?
I always thoughtthat was a really cool idea.
(43:21):
We we haven't gotten there by any means.
But, you know, these are the dreams.
One of the things we've learned incannabis is dream big, step small.
We did expand
our role, expanded our ideasand thought process very quickly.
Early on.
And what it taught us was that it's hubris
(43:42):
that we needto really focus in on one thing.
And while I don't byany means is we've sold cannabis,
I feel we've built up the chops to start
taking on the next hurdle and somethingthat's going to be seeds for us.
So we've been talking againthrough some European partners
and seed producers from U.S.
partners and see distributors as well.
(44:03):
Currently in the marketfor a test bed test form.
We have a few that we're in discussionswith and I'm really excited.
Again, the irony of going right backto being a farmer,
I can see the excitementjust glowing off your face, man.
I love to see when people are,
you know, passionate about what they do,but then they're also making
(44:25):
a huge impact.
And, you know, hearingyou talk about the potential
for decontaminating seedsbefore planning is huge.
So really excitedto see what comes of that.
And I like your your advice, you know,and in cannabis dream big but step small.
And I think that's a good,you know, opportunity for you
to kind of share some last thoughtsas we wrap up this conversation.
(44:48):
Is there any, you know, adviceor maybe something that
you want to reflect
on in your current experience that you'vekind of touched on with your food
so that you, you want the audienceto take away from this conversation?
(45:10):
This mothering pond I am that I've.
Have a whole notebook about prep questions
that I did my homework before thisand kind of try to prepare myself.
That was not one of them.
All right,so I. I threw a curveball at you.
Good. Yeah.
Yeah, I for one school got here.
(45:34):
I think one of the things that excites
me most is.
How rapidly we're
discovering variant cannabinoids.
Variant Tertmeans what we're seeing that they can do.
It's not just delta ninetetrahydrocannabinol anymore.
It's not just THC.
(45:55):
It's not just CBD we have on Earth.
Lateral, variants.
Some of them have incredibly unique uses.
CBD, for example, THC be, for example.
We're starting to see some studiesthat show that
(46:16):
there might beincreased insulin responses.
The idea that there could be
a diabete diabetesmedicine within cannabis that
is, is out thereto find is incredibly cool.
When we start looking at terpeneexpression, you know,
what is the world of taste?
What is the board of aromatic sense?
(46:37):
How do those compounds affect neurosynaptic response?
How does that change the user experience?
How can we adjust controland really go to a
individualized medicine approach?
Is really exciting.
And in order to do either of those things,
(46:58):
we have to have a clean product.
And it'sI got a front row seat to the future,
and that just excites to help in that.
That's so awesome, man.
That just fired me up here in that.
And I've had discussions in the pastin this podcast about the potential of,
you know, isolating these cannabinoids,these terpenes, these flavonoids,
(47:19):
and just how they can addresscertain ailments in the body.
And, it's exciting to see someone like youand hear firsthand.
For someone like you
who's on the frontlines, who'sseeing this from a science perspective
and reinforce that narrative because,you know, I'm just I'm just talking to
the people that arethat are actually implementing and doing.
And so,
(47:39):
it soundslike the innovation is still there.
We have lots to learn about this plant.
And, hopefully,you know, with this new administration,
something will change in terms of,you know, either scheduling, legalizing
and really starting to to thinkabout what we can do to move the needle.
And when it comes to health care and, and,
you know, mental health because this,this plant has a lot to offer.
(48:01):
So, Joe, thank you for your time.
And it is super awesome.
I do have to ask an off topic questionthough.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Hear I see a Corgi in the background.
It's, you know what?
He's actually, I don't even know he'snot a corgi, but he's like,
part Chihuahua.
And then, I don't know, the other half,what he is, but he's kind of a mutt.
(48:25):
His name is Toby.
My mine's Titan, and near identical.
That's why I asked.I saw the face. Someone.
Oh, he has the face of a Corgi,for sure, but,
it's a little misleadingbecause he's got the Chihuahua body, so,
That's awesome.
Well, now, I.
I can't thank you, though, for having meand let me rant and rave for.
(48:47):
Man, it has been an hour.
We kind of it flew by.
I learned a lot, man.
And, I appreciate you coming onand educating the audience.
And, you know, let's do it againreal soon.
I'd love to see the evolutionof your full moon
and all the great work y'all are doing.
So let's keep in touch.
Oh, man, that'd be great.
And, like I said, I'd give them acheck out and, I'll see if I can get the,
(49:10):
ski lift and, best runinfo from our marketing director as well.
Enjoy the 50 Colorado.
Man, it's a awesome time to be here.
We've been getting some really nice snow
and just just warm back up from the coldsnap.
So, I mean, ideal time. Awesome.
Yeah.
We're looking forward to our, our weeklong vacation in Colorado.
I'm going to be picking upsome good product from roots as well.
(49:32):
So shout out to them.
And, yeah Joe,appreciate all that you do man.
Thank you. Absolutely.
Thanks to Kerry.
Yep. And thank you all for listening. Bye.
Cannabinoid connect,
the nation'smost diverse cannabis related podcast.
321. Cannabinoid connect,
the nation's most diversecannabis related podcast.
And here we go, Joe.
(00:21):
It's great to have you, man.
It's been a pleasure just talking to you.
Off recording and, Yeah,it's a pleasure to have you.
You as well, man.
And thank you for having me on.
Do a little bit of background research.
And I got a lot, been really interestedin a couple of the companies.
You had only a couple of speakersyou've had on, especially
within the last yearor so, and I didn't dive back too far.
(00:43):
But really, like the machinefocus, the tech focus,
kind of fits, well, my niche.
I'm I'm a super nerd.
You were telling me earlier.
I mean, you're the you're the mathwhiz in the house.
Well, of course,your wife has other strengths that, keep
you guys simpatico and whatnot,but it's funny because I never,
(01:03):
was the, math or science whiz.
That wasI was always on the communications side.
Surprising Lee. Right.
And if you had told me, well,
almost 20 years ago, and I wasI was graduating the first time,
I was sure that,my career focus would be cannabis.
(01:24):
I laughed,
mostly because I was paying for my collegefor cannabis.
But, that I would get to spend
most of my days,
playing with one of the coolest puzzles
I've ever got a chance to dive into.
And that's kind of honestly,one of the things that's
kind of interested in cannabisfor so long is
(01:46):
I haven't found the bottom of the pool.
Right? Right. Yeah.
I mean, if you're
if you're into problem solving,this is the industry for you for sure.
Because, I mean, you have itnot only on the scientific level,
which we'll get into today,you know, in terms of decon
decontamination, practicesand whatnot post-harvest.
(02:08):
But, you know,the fact that even politically,
you know, there's like a chess gameand there's there's,
you know, different waysin which and regulations
you got to go about and figure things outbecause it's ever changing.
So it's just it's, it's it'sa very interesting space ever changing.
And it'sI think 38 simultaneous chess games.
(02:28):
Now at this point,there's only a few holdovers left
of all the different,all with their own unique qualities.
And microcosms.
And that that's been fun.
And it's I don't know, although,
Travel does get old to to an extent.
The unfortunate part isyou only fly into cool places,
(02:51):
and then you drive about an hourand a half away
from them to the middle of nowhere.
That's where tends to take this,where every once in a while possible.
I'm sorry.
In Massachusetts, you get to hang outaround Boston in kind of a small state,
but, there's a magical momentwhere you fly into,
what was the airport?
Southern California.
The sand. Sand? Something.
(03:13):
Anyway,and then you drive to the San Jose.
No, no, no.
And the,
bubble.
All right.
Anyway, when everyone'son the edge of the Mojave Desert,
because that'swhere you end up driving to.
And there is a quick stop,the hotel that you're staying at,
(03:34):
a diner
that has been there sinceand I don't think has been painted
or renovated since, obviously, 1908,something
and you're
trying to find the facility and you can't,and then you realize
it's been buried undergroundand shipping containers for the.
Oh, know,
(03:54):
but not quite deep enough.
So there's a problem.
Well, that's a good like thatbrings up a good point.
Like, what do you what do you all doto entertain yourself besides, like,
probably consume the product and bond,but like, you'd have to kind of stay busy
and stay entertained in those rural areaswhere there's not much going on right?
(04:15):
So I've kind of developed
to travel hobbies, we'll call it one,
but I never willbring my wife back into it, I guess.
She helps with one of them.
I become a foodie.
If you have a local cuisine, a hotspot,
a five star review on Yelp,I'm going to end up there.
Does the diner?
(04:35):
I like that I'm with that.
Yes, it's been cool.
Because those are out there.
Those hole in the walls are everywhere,especially those small towns.
I mean,you just got to ask the right people
or, you know, find the right, ratingon, like, you said, Google or Yelp.
And it's amazing experience, but you wouldhave some really, really cool things.
(04:56):
I didn't realizeDetroit had an amazing food scene.
I grew up in Ohio.
I mean,my view of Detroit was always, well,
we had Michigan, so,
it's not their fault.
When we didget another national championship,
I guess it's been a few decades for them,but in some sense.
All right, we don't brag too much.
(05:17):
Humblebrag, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, well.
So tell me, Joe. Like what?
What did youhow did you get started in this space?
I mean, like you said,
you know, you neverwould have really saw yourself in college
to now kind of making this trajectorybeing a science guy.
But it was it the challenges andthe problem solving that intrigued you?
(05:38):
Is it that you were a previous consumerand you saw the the value and the
benefit of the plant?
Yeah.
Weirdly enough, total opposite,
grew up through Ohio farm life and
you get about age
12, 13 growing up and working on a farm
(06:00):
where, man, you just want to run awayas fast as humanly possible.
On on my grandfather in conversation,one of these days.
Well, having run around the worldto not be a farmer,
to be a farmer.
But now,
grew up in a deep agriculturalbackground, had a really kind of.
(06:23):
Soil up understanding of
cultivation in a sense
of preservation.
Not necessarily the cornand soy that Ohio's so known for, but,
you know, kind of the farmer's market,vegetable fresh, farm to table produce
and always had a big appreciation for it.
(06:44):
But initially went to collegebecause I want to design video games.
Computer science engineeringwas the first one through
and meant did I hate it?
I absolutely couldn't stand it.
I needed about nine months,in my first year employment.
And, I figured outexactly how long I would have to be there.
(07:05):
And that's when I started working me.
Is it because of just,
the repetitive task of, like,just sitting at a desk and,
like, programing and code,and it was absolute monotony.
And you kind of had that view or premise.
Boy came out roughly about that time,and you had this view of video
game design, and it's not,and you only need to do that off the bat.
(07:28):
You get to sit in a little 3.5ftby three and a half by 3.5ft
break cubicle and,you know, an hour lunch break.
That's about the highlights.
And there was it was fun because it was
logic and Boolean based logic,and it was something I excelled at and,
(07:49):
I realized that I'd turned something
that I loved into something that I bored.
I would come home from workand I would sit down
and I wouldn't touch an electronic device.
You can see behind me,
I never saw your. Yeah.
Your collection is pretty impressivethere.
It took over the years.
(08:09):
Mostly because they're heavyand hard to move, and.
But that became my catharsis.
So I started thinking aboutwhat was the next step I'd,
at that point in time,felt like I had, in a sense, failed,
but knew that I had skills,knew that I had ideas
I knew I wanted to do,I knew what I didn't want to do,
(08:32):
and that that was probably the bigger onewas finding out all the things
that I didn't want to do and all
the things that I thought would suit mebut didn't, and went back on the college
path again, went into education,
thought I was suited for English,and almost turned another love
into something that I didn't want to do,and just took a giant step back.
(08:55):
And then
realized that there was somethingI'd been doing all the time
that I didn't really understand.
Okay.
Having financed
my college careerthrough private horticultural endeavors,
we became allegedly orphans.
Yeah.
Yeah, allegedly. And spent most,
(09:16):
you know, mostly,
Oh, but having realized that
there was something that.
I hadn't explored yet,
and initially it was.
How can.
I relate cultivation
how can I relate to productionof a given biomass to benefit?
(09:41):
And at that point in time,it was it was monetary.
But again, trying to bring things backaround to that,
that form either roll up or you.
How can that benefit
humanity?
Society.
And sort started looking at cannabis.
And at that point in time
there was no medical researchand completely prohibition era.
(10:04):
Not even really academic outside of hemp
and a few unique programsthat a couple of universities
but there was a
plethora of knowledge on was.
Both organic compound production.
And I started studying cut flowers.
(10:24):
Autism lilies were actually,the first kind of deep dive for me.
And that brought me to soil mechanics.
Soil mechanics brought me into lightingspectrum.
Lighting spectrum brought me to atmospherecontrol.
Atmosphere control brought meto fertilization and nutrient control.
(10:45):
And it kept diving and divingand diving and diving in.
And I didn't really knowwhere I was going with it.
I was kind of
spinning my wheels through continualeducation, not knowing what
I was going to do with all this timeand money that I invested.
And then right about 2009,
when Colorado legalized medical marijuana,
(11:05):
my wife looked at me and goes,
she read off the bottom,
let's move to Colorado.
Really?
And I was taken aback
because outsideof going to college in Pittsburgh,
she was not a traveler and explorer,
but I had that when I was younger. But.
(11:27):
I kind of flabbergasted.
But it really was
that eureka epiphany moment for me that
I obviously have a passion to the degreethat my partner
is willing to uproot herselfto make that change.
Certainly convenient,
you know, being an artistand not a whole lot to tie you down.
(11:48):
Well, this may surprise you,but Ohio does not
have what we call a robust art scene.
All of a sudden, oh, I know, amazing.
But that's amazing that she,
you know, was so open and supportive,like right off the bat, right?
I mean,especially because this industry comes
with some baggage in terms of the stigmaaround the plant, right?
(12:11):
I mean, I know that that's kind of,
this disappearingas there's more public support,
but especially probably at that time,
you know, your wife saw the opportunity,she knew your skill set.
And she's like, let's do this thing. And.
Yeah, it's spot on.
And it gave me
(12:32):
it gave me a lot of courage in that.
But to your point, you're absolutely rightthat there was a long time
where there was a horrible stigmato working in cannabis.
I know several individuals who werein those, you know, opening years through
oh nine in the recreational hitand 14 in Colorado.
And, you know, it was the Port Amsterdamof the restoration of humanity, etc..
(12:53):
Amsterdam, the East. But.
We kind of grown out of that, to a sense.
I guess, to a degree.
Sorry, the back,but I kind of got lost a memory.
A great friend of mine,
who actually worked for youth,
(13:14):
for quite some time, as well as one of ourassembly techs on the Dell technicians.
After we both kind of movedout of cannabis cultivation,
had a lot
of difficulty going back home to Florida
and getting a quote unquote normal job,because six years of his resume
had been an illicit industryand border was not permissible.
(13:34):
Had a lot of trouble, actually, no.
He since pivoted that into a lot of salesbased research
to kind of think tank based researchand project management
and kind of really made the better of itthere.
But it's crazy to think that we'venow kind of come all the way through.
The looking me was,
I remember telling my parents that,I was cultivating cannabis for a living.
(13:57):
That was an incredibly interestingconversation.
Yeah.
How did they how did they, take that?
Well, I found out my mom smokes weed.
Okay. All right.
Not good weed.
So you're like, mom, like,
hey, let me help you out here.
(14:18):
Yeah. And,
my dad,my dad said something along the lines of,
if you do something like thiswith you, eventually.
Well, then they weren't so surprised.
That's a good thing.
Then it was your calling, Joe.
But I,
I feel so, but no, it was it was, again,really encouraging on top of that, that
(14:42):
all of the new kind of key peoplein my life and my parents, my partner,
were supportive of
what was in every way the outsideof a couple of counties in Colorado.
And if you went too far down70, federally listed.
So there it was in Colorado.
But it was it was a huge risk. And
(15:03):
probably one of the biggest onesI've ever taken.
And there was great reward.
I, I couldn't be happier.
Well, that's that's amazing to hear.
I always love a good, you know,success story and you're still in it.
Right.
And so I think this is a good segueto talk about, you know, the real focus
in what you are doing in terms of,you know, addressing the issue
(15:28):
of keeping cannabis cleanand and addressing contamination risks.
So I guess a way to start this is like,just tell us about the impact
of contaminationon product quality, compliance
and even consumer health.
(15:48):
Oh man.
That's a fun little deep dive.
You want to start with some scary
or something upsetting?
I could go either way.
All right, let's go.
Upsetting.
All right, here's something upsetting.
(16:09):
Because of microbial regulationsand how tests are delineated
with no speciation on most used animals,
it is near impossible to use
a plethora of organic cultivationmethodologies.
Microbial teas,deepwater cultivation, living
soil,any programmatic or probiotic additives.
(16:32):
Because the test sampleshows a total count.
Not of this bad.
Now if it's good, no.
And a lot of labshave kind of developed their PCR, PCR,
IQ assays to really focus on
what are pathogenic yeasts and molds.
(16:52):
However, there's still a horrible
discrepancy in how we test samples.
We utilize PCR I PCR two,which is thermal cycler rapid.
We doing unit DNA sequencesand kind of extrapolating out
what could beand performing that combination perform
and extrapolationat an incredibly rapid rate.
(17:14):
And there are other labsthat use plate based
intubation methods using and three trigger
takes days at a time,
but it's near impossible to count
some.
And this has become a lessprevalent practice.
But some labs still usewhat they call stone plate analysis,
(17:36):
which is where you print outa piece of film, you put it over the plate
and there's a random dispersion,
dots, colored segments.
And that'swhat you look at under the microscope.
And where ever that happens to fallis what you count.
And then you multiply it by whateverthe delta is.
(17:56):
So that's 10% of the total area.
And then you multiply up to 100.
The dotsmay show dead in the middle of the colony.
They show absolutelyin the middle of nowhere,
completely unreliable.
Then when you couple that with the ideathat in most cases
sample size is not representativeharvest batch, I eat,
(18:18):
you can submit 7 to 14g in
some states, and that's representativeof hundreds of pounds of microbes.
Don't distributeevenly over numerous cultivars plants.
And just like people,have varying degrees of susceptibility
and even within the samegenome disease and chemo type,
we still see a huge range.
(18:38):
And what could potentially be healthierunhealthy?
Where is it in the room?
I was intrigued.
Did it get in this water?
Did it get light? Burn there?
Just simply not have enough airflowto prevent used in Moldova?
Did it see a contaminationbased on improperly treated soil media?
All of these things can happen.
(18:58):
So right next to healthy plant,you can have a contaminated plant.
Now what?
Random spatial samplingis supposed to help alleviate this?
It's completely inaccurateto what you may or may not have.
Okay.
So I'm goingto I'm trying to try to follow you here
because you are very science based,which I appreciate.
(19:19):
But you got to give grace to guys like me.
So it sounds like what you're saying isbecause there is discrepancies
within microbial testing across the board,there's kind of like not, a standard
if people kind of do their own testingmethods.
There's a lot of inaccuracieswhen it comes to the final results
(19:39):
and kind of how we can regulate.
And even the regulation is off.
You're saying as well,because of these testing methods,
part and parcel and all, but
a little bit.
Less than two.
There are multiple methodsthat are accredited.
(20:02):
There'sno standard for what method to use.
Okay.
Oftentimes it's based on laboratoryequipment, personnel training and ability
abilities, funding state requirements,and to a degree.
What they use, however,
is what we now call lab shopping.
(20:26):
Yeah.
If you notice, there's nothing like that.
Well, let's go to lab.
They might use a different chemicallast data for their PCR.
They might use a differentanalytical method
that might be more beneficial to you.
So this creates a potential issue herefor consumer health.
And then from the other sidewe have a sample size.
(20:48):
But our replicate that
while
attempting to be
a representation of the batchor the harvest
often should very short.
Now here's the upsetting one.
One of the things they can fallshort on is Aspergillus Niger.
(21:11):
No little bit better of black mold.
This can occur in cannabis.
Yes. The thing
that will send you out of your home,the thing and the cause.
Aspergillosisand multiple pulmonary respiratory impacts
can occur does occur in cannabis.
And I've heardI did some research as well.
(21:31):
And I heard one of the podcaststhat you were previously on, but
it was in 2023 and I was kind of shockedby the percentage that was thrown out.
It was, I think you saidor someone said on the podcast, 60%
of of cannabis products at the time,
like had some type of contaminationor I don't know
if it was mold, but likeand those are even legal.
(21:55):
I think I can remember that statistic.
The increase in incubation time from48 to 72 hours
resulted in an additional 60%failure of sample set,
which means that simply giving ita little bit more time to mature
and cultivate resulted in a massive
increase in failure rate.
(22:18):
I see,
so when it was post-harvest,it was probably okay within the threshold.
But then as they tried to cure and drivefor the extended period
is when contamination increased andyou can't hit the nail on the head there.
We do see the most abundant and rapid
microbial expansionduring drying maturation phases.
(22:43):
And the way I try to explain it to
or kind of bring clients into itas we start talking
about contamination, as we start talkingabout facility health and biosecurity,
is that
in a sense you can look at it
as a parasite host relationship,
the microbe being the parasite,the plant being host.
(23:05):
While possibleand in common circumstances,
we don't really seem incredibly high
microbial counts on living plants
are obviously exceptions
to the rule, and Botrytis may occur.
Results have sections that may exist.
(23:26):
A systemic issue,you know, becomes a play in that.
But in general, with healthy plants,healthy crops and stable cultivars
is very rare to see microbial countsin excess of a few thousand.
Part of the reason is,
is the microbe isn't desperate.
It still has room to spread.
(23:47):
It's got plenty of fuelfrom a chemical level, water
being fuel or carbon based life,
and it's not really worriedabout its own existence.
Now, the moment you cut that plant down,it now has a finite amount of resources.
As far as the microbesand certain parasites concerned.
So like most life on the planet,
(24:08):
when it sees the incoming year, it triesto replicate and spreads fast as it can.
Now we also look at
the difference in climate changebetween cultivation environments,
post-harvest environments,which is one of the things that actually
brought us to kind ofdeveloping the technology for your food.
They can often be incredibly different.
(24:28):
They can often be abrupt and changein temperature and humidity.
But even more than that,
we're taking the plant out of the crib
or moving it through a warehousewhere we're touching it.
We're handling it.
Even with proper PPE and propersanitization.
Humans are filthy and us toxic things as
(24:51):
typically not good.
So that was kind
of one of the conceptsthat really led us to, you know, thermo.
And if we rewind the clock now again, backto, you know, that 2014 is ERA,
we see a lot of differences
in how cultivation environmentsare constructed and operated.
(25:13):
There wasn't the purpose built technologythat now exists.
Ten years agowe were using Hvac units from server farms
and they were great at shedding heat,horrible taking care of moisture.
We were using whitening systemsfrom the flour industry,
and we're absolutely a corollarynot designed and spectrum
(25:34):
penetration of canopy.
We were using soil mediums
across the board.
Peat moss, proterra, purple noir grown
coconut crossed through dirt, living soil,
clay, beans,
spun lava, rock, all kinds of things.
(25:55):
Trying to figure out what was best.
And as we began to progressedthrough that cultivation phase,
as we really started to developthose technologies for the industry,
they became a huge gap inwhat was being put into
pre harvest phases,living phases and post-harvest phase.
So now we have an industry that is hyperfocused on how can we produce big
(26:20):
this plant
best plant, highest volatileorganic compound flower
turbines, flavonoids, cannabinoidslargest buds.
What can we do from an anthocyaninreaction to make things purple?
I'll kinds of cool things are happening.
But then we're cutting down the plantand we're going back to the Stone age.
(26:41):
We're putting things in buckets, binswhere we're shaking them.
They're going to closets with a humidifierfrom Home
Depot.
Right.
And then
as we got a lot of room for error, rightin, in that, in that type of process.
So this is another great segue.
(27:01):
So I mean, that seems likethere was a clear opportunity
that there was a needthat was needed to be filled.
Right.
And so your fumo talk to meabout its differentiator, because I know
that you have some type of ozonebased decontamination system.
We absolutely do.
And it's a cool methodology.
(27:22):
Wasn't always kind of designed that way.
Like, you know, kind of goingfrom that modernization
to a we revert to Stone age.
Originally we wanted to do curation.
We wanted to foster the bias biosynthesisreaction in a stable and hermetic way.
That post-harvest phase,that dry, that cured how can we do that?
(27:44):
How can we accelerate it?
How can we bring consistencyto this product?
And so it's no longer a bean and bucketburping system
kind of arbitrary to someone's nose.
Did it go too long to shortwhat happens in the process.
So that was kind of the original thought.
And that led us to the idea that, well.
(28:07):
How do we maintain that environment?
Okay. We can build from attic chamber,
but our chamber is only a chamber.
What if the cannabis itselfalready has it?
Contamination?
Unfortunately, a lot of the variablesthat control curation,
two primary onesbeing temperature, humidity,
are also the ones that controlmicrobial extraction to a high degree.
(28:31):
So if there's something there,we're only going to exacerbate the issue.
So this brought us kind ofto a compliance question.
And there was kind of a weird occurrencein the industry at the time.
Colorado,for whatever reason, decided to implement
microbialtesting for recreational cannabis,
(28:52):
not medical.
Well, medical didn't require that.
So seeing
those regulations come through,knowing us really well,
where we wanted to focus the technology,because there wasn't anybody
really developing in the sectorat that time for harvest,
we started looking compliance.
And we looked at complianceas we looked at
(29:15):
FDA statutes for foods, vegetables,
leafy greens, and kind of lookingat the development thereof
and how those industries really came upand where those standardization came from.
And looking at the ASTM standards and
what is the threshold for compliance?
(29:36):
I, I probably read the EU,GMP Pharmacopeia as well as the U.S.
Army appropriate,
man, more times than I care
to think about, but
it's really what provides the basis
for standardization, safety, health
and what cannabisis really taking a recreational turn.
(29:56):
It was originally,and still was in some places,
a medical only product.
So we're looking at medical product.
Then we need to look at consumer health,consumer safety, viability.
And this is again back to compliance.
One of the thingsthat became very apparent very quickly
(30:17):
is that pretty muchevery agricultural industry
has a means of sanitization of the biomassof their cultivating, be it or dioxide.
Read the large radiation exposure, be it
pastures, pasteurization,there's something there.
There's a control step that is implemented
(30:40):
en masse without question.
So we looked forward and
it was a scary look to a degree,
because we didn't really knowhow we were going to accomplish that.
We knew the gases exposure,
something like chlorine dioxide,which works great with your fruits
(31:03):
and vegetablesand soft ground, hard right objects
because you can rinse itbecause you can wash it.
There's very little riskof remaindered chemical compound
or really any risks to the humanbiome with proper usage.
Always wash your fruits and vegetables.
By the way, yes.
(31:24):
But we also saw that when you looked at
what the global scale was doing, that
a lot of these things were being
regulated in to extension.
Foreign dioxidereally wasn't a viable methodology
for anybody producing an organic productor an heirloom product.
(31:44):
Certain EU countries had already began
limiting its permissibility.
Look at radiation.
And that's a really wonderful technologyin a lot of ways.
The grain industry would bein a very different place without it.
But we also kind of startedagainst the idea of radiation.
(32:08):
So we started looking atwhat's the scale of contamination.
And at that point in time,there wasn't really a huge definitive list
like there is,
for most environments now,
we were just looking at a rogue bacteria.
We were just looking at totalyeast and mortality,
and we were looking for a few otherbig things.
We're looking for colon.We're looking for Stec.
(32:30):
Things that we knew to be absolutepathogenic, harmful.
There's a lot more not more than that.
And we've kind of developed through there.
Now we test for aerobicand throw the gram negative bio
tolerant toward yeast and mold coliformPseudomonas various Aspergillus variant.
So that's really cool and stuff.
(32:51):
But it's kind of reallybecome much more robust in what we look at
and what is in the realm of turns.
So we took that as notes and of looking
at, okay, how can we interact with this?
And we reallylike ozone in the sense that.
It's readily available,
(33:12):
is cheap in the sense of.
Equipment design
and build doesn't break apart.
When you look at systems like Z
or systems like source,they can be incredibly expensive
and they're highly calibrated sciencemachines.
It makes perfect sense.
(33:34):
A lot of cultivators don't necessarily
have a huge chunk of disposable income.
When I think the falsehoods
that's kind of existent in the cannabisindustry is,
it just makes money hand over fist.
And that was not truein a lot of places for some time.
(33:56):
But it's become like every othervery industry, highly competitive and
highly controlled because it's a commodityand not like commodities
becoming close to federally available.
So with that in mind,
I kind of moved back from radiation.
(34:17):
That kind of struckus back in the drawing board
because there was
at that time,no way that ozone was really being used
to interactwith the gamut of microbial contaminants
that we that we needed to.
So the idea became,
is there a way that we can achieve
(34:39):
with ozone, a similar result to radiation?
Specifically ionic radiation.
So we were looking atwhat does it do to cellular structure.
It's disruption of the cells,
corruption of the DNA.
It's true death on that to that regard.
(34:59):
It's it's in our carbon at that point.
And we thought we could.
So we kind of went back to ozone,
but we sort of looking at itin a different way,
instead of looking at ozonethrough a lens of what's called
atmospheric deprivation,probably enough ozone to open fire
(35:21):
in space, where you kill everythingacross the appropriate spectrum.
Spectrum needs oxygen to live.
Is there a way that
we could interact with more than that?
Now, here's problemnumber one ozone free radical oxidizer.
What that means is,is this completely non discriminant.
It doesn't carewhat interacts with interacts with
(35:44):
everything.
The encounters period and paragraph.
No. How does it reactbecomes the next question.
What's the threshold ozone requisite
to interact with yeasts
molds other microbial compoundsdevelop bacteria.
Is that threshold lower than the thresholdwhere we start seeing
(36:07):
cellular degradation of the plant itself,or we start seeing the decomposition
or oxidization of turbines for minerals,cannabinoids, volatile organic compounds.
The entire reasonwe grow and smell cannabis,
right.
And the answer isthe answer is yeah, yeah, it is lower.
And now the questionbecame how do you control it.
(36:30):
And there'sa couple ways that you can generate ozone.
Traditional ozone pumps convertx percent of atmospheric oxygen
based on pump sizebased on purity of feedstock.
2120 1.6% tends
to be the averagefor most commercial grade ozone pumps.
There are many.
They go higher.There's some that go lower.
(36:53):
But it's an on or off.
You're not regulating what is doing.
The machine works. Machine doesn't work.
You can't have turned the dial from 1to 100
and say,I only want you to convert this much.
You can feed it oxygen.
You can control what it's getting froma fuel standpoint, what it's converting.
(37:13):
And you can
approximate to a degree what it does.
But that wasn't going to be sufficient.
We weren't looking at the control
you know, plus or minus a few hundredplus or minus a few thousand.
We wanted to control to single ppm.
(37:33):
So we started looking at
other ways that ozone was generated.
One of the thingsthat we kind of stumbled upon
was do these three elements,
light bulbs.
So everything vibrates
UVC elements when powered.
(37:56):
Vibrate at a frequency
that actually creates ozoneor can vibrate to actually create suction.
So between about 183 and 207nanometer range,
you can those almost BBC elements.
It's stable between about 184
and 187 actually stable
(38:18):
within about 185,which is where we really kind of felt that
that sweet spot was for
production versus longevity.
And that was all fun and gamesand math on paper.
How do we actually do it?
So we went in search of someone
that could make this magic wand for us.
(38:41):
Stumbled upona company called Land Ultraviolet, which,
unbeknownst to us,
was one of the largest producersin the world of the genetic elements.
So they were obviously able to createfor us.
A completely proprietary
generation elementthat allowed us to control the exact
(39:02):
gram per minute per cubic footproduction of ozone within the unit.
And then it became
a game changer.
Six years, six years of researchfiguring out
contaminant X and Y.
And we did see reevaluation,third party evaluation.
(39:23):
Do we see degradation of VOCs?
We see degradation in box in third partyanalysis
EU GMP validation, see validation.
I essentially took the entire budgetfrom the companies
place a little over a decade and just sunkinto material science research.
I'm still getting some flack for that.
(39:46):
Well, I mean, you got to buildyou got to build the case studies, right?
You got to build the research tothen point back to kind of
provethat the mythology, methodology works.
And there has beensome success in the studies.
So I get why you and I.
And we had to we had to,you know, and we still do this every day.
Overcome some hurdles.
(40:07):
There's other ozoneproducing companies out there that utilize
different methodologies,that people have a degree of
negative,
Negative thoughts about,
and there's a lot of research around
(40:27):
all the terrible things ozone can do.
So we've had to kind of reallyprove our way every step of the way,
in the sense that even oncewe thought we had a robust system,
as we were going through our trial basisin our alpha and beta years,
we finally landed on what became our finalgo to market product.
We were never given the things to work,just, hey, try.
(40:51):
It means I hate to sound like a used carsalesman, but money back
guarantee like I that I knowwe know what we're doing,
but convincing peopleto put thousands of dollars
and we have a throughput capacity of 30 to50 pounds, depending on biomass density.
I mean, even if you take a
(41:12):
market like Coloradoand I think we're sitting
somewhere around 790 to 1100 a pound,
depending on the let's calla thousand flat rate math units,
and someone put 30 grand in the machine,you know, because you said it'll work.
It's not an easy conversation
(41:32):
I can imagine. Yeah.
So I mean,
do you see your firm's technology
maybe influencing agricultureand food safety across the board,
like as their plans to expand
to other industries?
Or are there other
applications beyond cannabis?
(41:55):
Absolutely.
One of our original founderswas was founded saying,
no one's going to pay us for cleantomatoes.
They already think they knowhow to do that.
We have to prove we can find something
that hasn't yet existed.
Cannabis was,you know, that that medium, obviously.
(42:15):
But we've been working
through some European partners doing seedbased decontamination, pre planting.
We've seen increases in germination.
We've seen higher decreasecrop uniformity.
We've seen lower rates of pathogenicresponse or pathogen contamination.
We've even seen dropsin systemic contamination
(42:38):
still very muchin the development stage. But.
Oh yeah absolutely.
I always kind of dreamed of the day where,
I can replace the fruit juicein your fridge with your food.
Much more.
You know, the idea always been.
(42:59):
Farms people produce is amazing.
But you also bring some of the farmsto your table.
Now, what if you could just stickthat in a drawer in your fridge
and within minutes,
you have farm to table, but
completely, absolutely sterile, clean?
I always thoughtthat was a really cool idea.
(43:21):
We we haven't gotten there by any means.
But, you know, these are the dreams.
One of the things we've learned incannabis is dream big, step small.
We did expand
our role, expanded our ideasand thought process very quickly.
Early on.
And what it taught us was that it's hubris
(43:42):
that we needto really focus in on one thing.
And while I don't byany means is we've sold cannabis,
I feel we've built up the chops to start
taking on the next hurdle and somethingthat's going to be seeds for us.
So we've been talking againthrough some European partners
and seed producers from U.S.
partners and see distributors as well.
(44:03):
Currently in the marketfor a test bed test form.
We have a few that we're in discussionswith and I'm really excited.
Again, the irony of going right backto being a farmer,
I can see the excitementjust glowing off your face, man.
I love to see when people are,
you know, passionate about what they do,but then they're also making
(44:25):
a huge impact.
And, you know, hearingyou talk about the potential
for decontaminating seedsbefore planning is huge.
So really excitedto see what comes of that.
And I like your your advice, you know,and in cannabis dream big but step small.
And I think that's a good,you know, opportunity for you
to kind of share some last thoughtsas we wrap up this conversation.
(44:48):
Is there any, you know, adviceor maybe something that
you want to reflect
on in your current experience that you'vekind of touched on with your food
so that you, you want the audienceto take away from this conversation?
(45:10):
This mothering pond I am that I've.
Have a whole notebook about prep questions
that I did my homework before thisand kind of try to prepare myself.
That was not one of them.
All right,so I. I threw a curveball at you.
Good. Yeah.
Yeah, I for one school got here.
(45:34):
I think one of the things that excites
me most is.
How rapidly we're
discovering variant cannabinoids.
Variant Tertmeans what we're seeing that they can do.
It's not just delta ninetetrahydrocannabinol anymore.
It's not just THC.
(45:55):
It's not just CBD we have on Earth.
Lateral, variants.
Some of them have incredibly unique uses.
CBD, for example, THC be, for example.
We're starting to see some studiesthat show that
(46:16):
there might beincreased insulin responses.
The idea that there could be
a diabete diabetesmedicine within cannabis that
is, is out thereto find is incredibly cool.
When we start looking at terpeneexpression, you know,
what is the world of taste?
What is the board of aromatic sense?
(46:37):
How do those compounds affect neurosynaptic response?
How does that change the user experience?
How can we adjust controland really go to a
individualized medicine approach?
Is really exciting.
And in order to do either of those things,
(46:58):
we have to have a clean product.
And it'sI got a front row seat to the future,
and that just excites to help in that.
That's so awesome, man.
That just fired me up here in that.
And I've had discussions in the pastin this podcast about the potential of,
you know, isolating these cannabinoids,these terpenes, these flavonoids,
(47:19):
and just how they can addresscertain ailments in the body.
And, it's exciting to see someone like youand hear firsthand.
For someone like you
who's on the frontlines, who'sseeing this from a science perspective
and reinforce that narrative because,you know, I'm just I'm just talking to
the people that arethat are actually implementing and doing.
And so,
(47:39):
it soundslike the innovation is still there.
We have lots to learn about this plant.
And, hopefully,you know, with this new administration,
something will change in terms of,you know, either scheduling, legalizing
and really starting to to thinkabout what we can do to move the needle.
And when it comes to health care and, and,
you know, mental health because this,this plant has a lot to offer.
(48:01):
So, Joe, thank you for your time.
And it is super awesome.
I do have to ask an off topic questionthough.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Hear I see a Corgi in the background.
It's, you know what?
He's actually, I don't even know he'snot a corgi, but he's like,
part Chihuahua.
And then, I don't know, the other half,what he is, but he's kind of a mutt.
(48:25):
His name is Toby.
My mine's Titan, and near identical.
That's why I asked.I saw the face. Someone.
Oh, he has the face of a Corgi,for sure, but,
it's a little misleadingbecause he's got the Chihuahua body, so,
That's awesome.
Well, now, I.
I can't thank you, though, for having meand let me rant and rave for.
(48:47):
Man, it has been an hour.
We kind of it flew by.
I learned a lot, man.
And, I appreciate you coming onand educating the audience.
And, you know, let's do it againreal soon.
I'd love to see the evolutionof your full moon
and all the great work y'all are doing.
So let's keep in touch.
Oh, man, that'd be great.
And, like I said, I'd give them acheck out and, I'll see if I can get the,
(49:10):
ski lift and, best runinfo from our marketing director as well.
Enjoy the 50 Colorado.
Man, it's a awesome time to be here.
We've been getting some really nice snow
and just just warm back up from the coldsnap.
So, I mean, ideal time. Awesome.
Yeah.
We're looking forward to our, our weeklong vacation in Colorado.
I'm going to be picking upsome good product from roots as well.
(49:32):
So shout out to them.
And, yeah Joe,appreciate all that you do man.
Thank you. Absolutely.
Thanks to Kerry.
Yep. And thank you all for listening. Bye.
Cannabinoid connect,
the nation'smost diverse cannabis related podcast.
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