What “ISO 17025-accredited” means and why we list it on every COA

The Certificate of Analysis (COA) for every Honest Botanicals product names the laboratory that performed the testing and lists the lab’s accreditation. The accreditation we look for is ISO/IEC 17025. This article explains what the standard is, who issues it, and why it is the relevant accreditation for cannabis testing in Canada.

What ISO 17025 is

ISO/IEC 17025 is an international standard published by the International Organization for Standardization, titled “General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories.” It is the standard against which a laboratory’s technical competence is evaluated when the lab is performing testing or calibration whose results need to be defensible — in court, for regulatory submission, or for commerce.

The standard covers two things in detail:

1. Management requirements — how the lab is organized, how documents are controlled, how complaints are handled, how non-conforming work is identified and corrected.
2. Technical requirements — the qualifications of the people doing the testing, the equipment they use, how that equipment is calibrated and maintained, how methods are validated, how measurement uncertainty is calculated, and how results are reported.

The current version of the standard is ISO/IEC 17025:2017. Laboratories are reassessed against the standard on a multi-year cycle by an accreditation body that is itself accredited (typically by a national agency that signs the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation Mutual Recognition Arrangement, ILAC MRA).

Who accredits Canadian cannabis labs

In Canada, the two recognized accreditation bodies for ISO 17025 are the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) and the Canadian Association for Laboratory Accreditation (CALA). Both are signatories to the ILAC MRA, which means an ISO 17025 accreditation issued by either is recognized internationally.

A Canadian cannabis testing laboratory’s ISO 17025 accreditation has a defined scope — meaning the lab is accredited to perform specific test methods (HPLC for cannabinoid potency, GC-MS for residual solvents and terpenes, ICP-MS for heavy metals, qPCR or culture-based methods for microbial contaminants), not to perform any test in its building. The COA for a specific lot should list the test methods used; those methods should be within the lab’s accredited scope.

Why this matters for a CBD product

Two reasons.

First, cannabinoid potency testing requires expensive instrumentation (HPLC) and validated methods. A non-accredited lab can buy the instrument, but the accreditation is what attests that the methods are validated, the instrument is calibrated against traceable standards, and the people running the test know how to interpret the chromatogram. Without ISO 17025 accreditation, the COA is a document the lab produced; with it, the COA is a document the lab is accountable for.

Second, contaminant testing — for residual solvents, heavy metals, pesticides, mycotoxins, and microbial contaminants — has to be sensitive enough to detect contaminants at the levels Health Canada specifies. The accreditation scope confirms the lab’s instrumentation and methods are validated to those detection limits. A “pesticide test” run with a method that detects only ten times the regulatory limit is functionally not a test.

What to look for on the COA

A useful CBD COA will name:

• The accredited laboratory.
• The accreditation standard (ISO/IEC 17025:2017) and the accrediting body (SCC, CALA, or another ILAC MRA signatory).
• The lab’s certificate or scope number.
• The specific test methods used (e.g., HPLC-DAD for cannabinoid potency, GC-MS for residual solvents).
• The measurement uncertainty for each result.
• The result, with a clear pass/fail or below-LOD designation against the regulatory limit.
• The lot number, the date of testing, and the analyst’s signature or initials.

Honest Botanicals links the COA on every product page. If a COA is missing any of the elements above, we want to know — email hello@honestbotanicals.co with the product’s lot number.

A note on what ISO 17025 does not certify

ISO 17025 certifies the lab’s competence to perform validated test methods. It does not certify the product itself. A product whose COA is from an accredited lab and whose test results pass Canadian regulatory limits is a product that has been tested by a competent lab; the test results speak for themselves. The accreditation is on the testing process, not on the cannabinoid the product contains.

That distinction matters: the COA is evidence about the contents of the product. What the contents do to a person is a different question — and one we do not answer in any of our marketing materials. The Cannabis Act, section 17, restricts those answers, and the published scientific literature, your physician, and Health Canada’s monographs are the appropriate sources.