2026-01-26
A Certificate of Analysis, or COA, is a lab report generated by an independent testing facility after analyzing a specific batch of product. It's the closest thing the hemp industry has to a nutrition label with teeth — and unlike a nutrition label, a COA is generated by a third party, not the brand itself.
If a brand publishes its own in-house numbers with no outside lab involved, that's not a COA — it's a marketing claim wearing a lab coat. A real COA names the testing lab, the accreditation it holds, the batch number tested, and the date of the test.
This is usually the first section, and it lists the concentration of each cannabinoid detected: CBD, delta-9 THC, THCA, CBG, CBN, and others depending on the lab's testing scope. For a CBD isolate product, you should expect to see CBD as essentially the only cannabinoid present, with THC and its isomers reported as "non-detectable" or "ND."
Under the 2026 federal hemp standard, what matters is total THC across all isomers, summed together — not just the delta-9 THC number in isolation. A trustworthy COA reports each isomer separately so you (or a compliance auditor) can add them up yourself.
Beyond cannabinoids, a complete COA also screens for things that have nothing to do with potency but everything to do with safety: pesticides, heavy metals (like lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury), and microbial contaminants (like mold or E. coli). Each of these should show a clear pass/fail result, not just a raw number without context.
These screens matter because hemp is a bioaccumulator — it tends to absorb whatever is in the soil it's grown in, contaminants included. A CBD product can have a perfect cannabinoid profile and still be a problem if it fails a heavy metals or pesticide screen.
A few things should make you pause before trusting a COA: no accredited lab named, a batch number that doesn't match what's printed on your product, a test date that's suspiciously old relative to when you bought the product, or a document that only shows cannabinoids with no contaminant screening at all.
Devils Lips publishes a COA for every batch we sell, linked directly from each product page and searchable by batch number on our Verify a COA tool. As we bring inventory back online, every one of those documents will name the accredited lab that ran the tests — no exceptions.