In early June at the second annual World Cannabis Congress, Shoppers Drug Mart announced that it will be implementing a pilot program using the StrainSecure™ platform, a proprietary of TruTrace Technologies, which focuses on the testing of cannabis products to verify their origin, authenticity and provide quality assurance.
A&L Canada Laboratories Inc. and TruTrace Technologies Inc. have announced that A&L will be one of the leading testing facilities in the Shoppers Drug Mart medical cannabis verification pilot program. The pilot program will provide software to Shoppers which will give them the ability to track the medicinal cannabis they sell from seed to the final product; allowing both patients and practitioners to feel confident about what they are getting when they purchase medicinal cannabis.
TrueTrace is the creator of the first fully-integrated blockchain platform used to register and track intellectual property in the cannabis industry. A blockchain is a type of digital storage wherein a growing list of records (referred to as “blocks”) are linked together using cryptography. In each record, or block, there is a timestamp, as well as a cryptographic link to the previous block and a transaction data; this means that once recorded no block can be modified retroactively without changing all of the blocks that follow. The blockchain was invented by the entity Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to be used for the crytpocurrency bitcoin, to act as the ongoing public transaction ledger.
“We are very pleased to have secured the support of A&L to provide an essential element of the Pilot Program… A fundamental objective of the program is to provide complete assurance to medical patients about the origins and quality of their cannabis. A&L’s testing services are a key aspect of meeting that objective.”
TruTrace Technologies CEO, Robert Galarza
According to a news release published by Newswire, A&L was one of the first testing facilities to receive a Health Canada testing license under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR). Moreover, the company recently received the award for Best Testing Facility at the national annual event held in recognition of Canadian cannabis professionals and companies, the O’Cannabiz Awards Gala.
Nevin McDougall, President and Chief Commercial Officer of A&L, said in the news release: “We provide the full range of services required by TruTrace and Shoppers, and we are proud to support the transparency and accountability goals of this Pilot Program. Our capabilities in testing through all stages of the cannabis production cycle will fully support the quality assurance mandate of Shoppers.”
Shoppers currently provides medicinal cannabis to those with an authorization, but at this time they are only offering this service online.
