Certificates
How to read a certificate of analysis
A certificate of analysis, or COA, is the laboratory's report on one specific lot of one specific product. It is the only document in this category that can be checked rather than believed. Five checks, in order, and what each one catches.
Every example below is a real figure from a Swiss Vitalis lot, with the laboratory's own page linked beside it. Last reviewed .
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Does the certificate name the product you are holding?
Read the product name and the lot number on the certificate, and match both against the bottle. If either disagrees, the document is not evidence about your bottle, no matter how good the numbers on it are.
This is the check people skip, and it is the one that catches the most. A supplier who sends a certificate for a different lot is not necessarily hiding anything, but they have handed you a document about a product you do not have.
Worth knowingA lot number and a sample ID are different things. The lot is the batch of product; the sample ID is the laboratory's reference for the material it received. One lot can produce several sample IDs: our Full-Spectrum lot SV-FST6000-001 has sample 260702S001 for potency and 260713L036 for terpenes, collected on different days.
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Who ran the test, and are they accredited?
Look for the laboratory's name and an ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation, with the accrediting body and a number. Accreditation is not the laboratory's own claim about itself: it means an outside body audited their methods.
An in-house result from the manufacturer is not the same document. It may be perfectly accurate and it is still the seller marking their own homework.
OursSC Labs, accredited to ISO/IEC 17025, PJLA accreditation number 87168. Three of the four certificates sit on the laboratory's own client portal rather than on our server, which means we cannot edit them after the fact. The gummies certificate is not on that portal and is served from this site instead, which is a weaker guarantee. See them on the SC Labs portal.
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Does the measured potency match the label?
Find the total for the cannabinoid the label promises and compare the two numbers. A small gap is normal and expected. A gap the seller will not discuss is the problem.
Check the unit as well as the figure. A number given per millilitre, per gram and per container are three different numbers about the same bottle, and confusing them is the easiest honest mistake in this category.
Label against certificate, Swiss Vitalis lots Product Lot Label Measured Difference Full-Spectrum CBD Oil SV-FST6000-001 6,000 mg 6,005.910 mg +0.10% Broad-Spectrum CBD Oil 220625 6,000 mg 6,187.334 mg +3.1% THCv Isolate 313126 1,000 mg 1,068.336 mg +6.8% All three are per container. Measured figures read from the certificates linked above.
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What does ND mean on a cannabinoid certificate?
ND means not detected: the laboratory looked for the compound and did not find it above the limit of detection of the method it used. It is a statement about the method, not a guarantee that the compound is absent.
This distinction is the reason we never describe any product as free of a compound. No analytical method reports zero. What a certificate can say is that something was not found at a stated sensitivity, and the honest way to publish that is with the sensitivity beside it.
Look for the LOD, the limit of detection, and the LOQ, the limit of quantitation. The first is the smallest amount the method can see at all; the second is the smallest it can measure with confidence. A certificate that reports ND without publishing either is asking you to take the sensitivity on faith.
OursOn Broad-Spectrum lot 220625, total THC is reported as not detected, with a limit of detection for Δ9-THC of 0.002 mg/g. That is what the page says, and it is deliberately not the shorter sentence a marketing team would prefer.
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Which safety panels did this lot actually run?
Read the list of panels on the certificate itself rather than a summary anywhere else. Panels differ between lots and between products, and a supplier describing a single panel for their whole range is describing something the documents do not support.
The common panels are pesticides, heavy metals, residual solvents, mycotoxins and microbiology. A certificate that runs four of them is not a bad certificate. A seller who implies it ran five is the problem.
Panels on the current Swiss Vitalis lots Panel Full-Spectrum
SV-FST6000-001Broad-Spectrum
220625THCv
313126Pesticides Pass Pass Pass Heavy metals Pass Pass Pass Residual solvents Pass Pass Pass Mycotoxins Pass Pass not on this certificate Microbiology Pass, PCR and plating not on this certificate Pass, PCR We publish this table with the gaps showing because the gaps are the useful part. Reading it as a weakness would be reading it wrong: what it shows is that the certificates are real documents about specific lots rather than a badge.
What a certificate cannot tell you
It reports what was measured on the material the laboratory received. It does not describe what a product does to a body, it does not cover a lot other than the one named on it, and it is not a substitute for confirming what is legal to sell in your own territory.
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