With the many developments in the world of hemp and CBD treatments since the passing of the Agricultural Improvement Act, we are seeing the industry become much more scientifically minded and corporately organized. One company that is moving towards the future is Veritas Farms.
The South Florida/Colorado based company manufactures a variety of full spectrum hemp oil and CBD products with great success. Their feature in Men’s Health magazine shows how their products can be incorporated into day to day life. What makes Veritas Farms particularly unique in the world of CBD products, is that they craft full spectrum hemp oil products rather than CBD isolates. This is important — as will be explained in further detail in the interview below — because of the comprehensive nature of full spectrum hemp oil products.
I had the opportunity to speak with the newest executive brought into their fold, Dr Dan Connors, an analytical chemist who worked for the FDA and was recognized for his contributions in handling the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He has worked in both the public and private sectors and is now bringing his expertise to the world of hemp and CBD. This move shows how serious Veritas Farms is about crafting quality products.
CBD treatments have gone mainstream to the point where NBA players are very open about their use of CBD products. This interview with Dr Connors offers great insight into everything that goes into producing these products while helping us understand the advantages of full spectrum hemp oil and its different uses. To check out all of their products, go to the Veritas Farms website.
Grit Daily: How do you think your experience at the FDA will translate to the Hemp/CBD industry?
Dan Connors: The goal of Veritas Farms, and everyone who is serious about the industry, is to build quality products. My training is strictly on the chemical side and a little bit of the biology side. The first thing that I learned at the FDA is that whatever you put out, you need to be able to defend in court. It is important for me to be able to provide a product that if we were ever to face a confrontation, I would be able to defend it.
GD: So would you say your focus is quality control or product development?
DC: I am working on both sides of things. We have a nice system in place and we have great teams in both product development and quality control that I work with. My training is in creating new drugs and combining materials, so I have a lot of interest in new product development and am excited about that. While I am an analytical chemist by trade, I think I have something to bring to the table in that regard.
I was most recently working for a small technology firm in the oil and gas industry. We had to be very particular about the chemistry, so we put together an impressive laboratory that handled DNA sequencing and identifying microbes. I am thrilled that there is interest for methodologies like that in the CBD industry, an industry that it is ripe for some exciting new research.
GD: What are the immediate goals of the R&D department now that you have joined the team?
DC: Our first priority is to assist our quality department into being able to do analyses that are not necessarily available right now. For example, looking at lower concentrations of some of the cannabinoids that are in our full spectrum oils. We want to be able to understand the compounds of interest in our hemp oils that are difficult to detect under typical circumstances.
We also want to look at more sophisticated genetics for some of our plants. We want to guarantee that we select the plants that are most likely to express compounds that we like, for example: CBD over THC.
GD: What are the advantages of full spectrum hemp oil products versus isolated CBD products?
DC: Our understanding of the phenomenon associated with using full spectrum oils comes from academic work on the endocannabinoid system called the entourage effect. It is not fully understood, but basically says that when you have a combination of cannabinoid compounds that are all brought together in a single dose, it has a much larger impact than an isolated compound would.
GD: So, it is sort of like the concept of whole flower medicine in Medical Marijuana?
DC: That is definitely a parallel argument, although it is not the same experience. All cannabis has terpenes that seem to have medicinal and therapeutic effect. When you use a hemp oil versus an isolate, you can get more terpenes.
GD: Veritas Farms has a product line targeted towards pets. How does that work?
DC: Our product development team has really been successful in coming up with pet products. One of the most common complaints that pet owners have is that dogs have anxiety. That problem seems to be really effectively treated by CBD and hemp oil.
We found that our hemp oil is really well suited for animals — of course at lower doses — especially our liquid tinctures designed for oral use. It addresses anxiety and other nervous behaviors. It also just so happens that most dogs really like the taste of it, so it’s not a challenge to medicate them.
Hemp oil also addresses hot-spots that dogs have — skin irritation in certain areas — so we have been creating topical solutions with pain relief properties to help with that.
GD: If Marijuana with THC becomes legalized on the federal level, will Veritas Farms be looking to break into the Medical/Recreational Marijuana Market? The infrastructure to do so seems like it would be in place
DC: Right now we’re focusing on hemp oils and CBD products. We don’t see an advantage in higher THC contents because our core competencies focus on treatments with CBDs and hemp oils in addressing pain and sleep issues. Our feed-stock is also selected for plants that yield the highest amounts of CBD and low amounts of THC.
THC has therapeutic effects, but due to the not trivial side effect of it being psychoactive, we think that some of the drawbacks of having a THC product would not be worth any incremental gains. If new discoveries are made that maybe THC has some additional therapeutic value, then we will certainly readdress it.
GD: Are there any new products that Veritas Farms is looking to branch out into?
DC: I’ve got some really cool ones that I can’t discuss and wish that I could; we have some really interesting things that we are working on. We have a new foot pain approach that we are excited about. Foot pain is an under-served problem and also a common problem, so we are coming up with some new applications to address that.
I wish I could tell you the 10 month goals that we have in place, but unfortunately I can’t. All I can say is that we are looking seriously into how to provide more effective treatment with less hemp oil.
