The Taunton Bay Kratom "Smear Campaign"

*In the interest of full disclosure, I have made purchases from Taunton Bay Soap Company many times in the past.

On September 26, 2018, lab results from the products of a popular kratom vendor were posted in a group on Facebook. The report showed mold and yeast counts that she found concerning.

The poster claimed that she had purchased several products from Taunton Bay Soap Company on August 22, 2018: Hirsuta, Javanica, and kratom. Upon opening the Hirsuta and Javanica, she alleged they had a funny smell, which then prompted to her leave the packages of kratom unopened to be sent out for testing. There were five kratom strains tested, and pictures of all five results were included in the post. Each strain showed high levels of mold, and the lab reports stated the content was “Too Numerous To Count,” or TNTC. Click here to view pictures of the labs and the corresponding product labels. The news quickly spread outside of the group, leaving many consumers confused and concerned.

To corroborate her story, the poster provided pictures of each product label with the associating lot numbers, and also provided a video of herself placing the unopened kratom into a box, and sealing it with packing tape to be mailed out. In any case, all was not as it seemed.

The client name on the lab results were covered, which caused suspicions to arise. After further research, the poster appeared to be working for a botanical competitor, Urban Ice Organics. As further explanation, the poster stated she frequently buys from other kratom vendors for her own personal use, and that any professional relationship she had with the competing vendor played no part in her decision to have the kratom tested. She also claimed that she sent the products off for testing because she saw that Taunton Bay Soap Company and another kratom vendor, Gaia Ethnobotanical, LLC, were teaming up to help a plant-based rehab facility. (Gaia’s owner, Daniel Bower, had been caught forging lab results for his own products and, several months ago, some of his kratom was recalled due to alleged salmonella contamination.) Although she was concerned that perhaps Taunton Bay and Gaia were selling products from the same tainted batches, it was later determined that the companies weren’t actually teaming up, but that they simply both had made large donations to the rehab facility.

Several weeks prior to the Facebook post, the lab results were sent directly to Taunton Bay by the owner of Urban Ice Organics, Kelly Dunn, as Taunton Bay has confirmed. He requested to see their lab results of the same products to check for inconsistencies. Taunton Bay was not able to produce the results, so they allege to have sent new samples of the same product batches to be tested again.

Taunton Bay Soap Company owners, Veronicka Bamford-Connors and Norman Bamford, responded to the claims in a live video on their Facebookpage on September 28, 2018. They reiterated that they test their products regularly, they follow cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) guidelines, and that they had never received results like this. As an explanation as to why they were unable to produce results from their own lab, the labs Dunn requested to see, that should have been done prior to the products being released for sale, they explained: a former employee of the company was tasked with sending the samples out for testing. That employee then took a vacation without informing anyone in management, and it was later discovered the samples had never been sent. That employee no longer works for them, and they sent out new samples of the product in question on September 11, 2018 after hearing from Dunn. Bamford-Connors and Bamford stated they test every product that comes in before it is listed for sale, this was a one-time clerical error, and they are happy to show any lab results to anyone who asks for them. They also firmly stated they would not send the results to Dunn at all, citing the fact that vendors do not have to prove their lab results to other vendors. I reached out to request copies of the last labs they received, and they did not respond. In fact, as of this writing on October 11, 2018, no new (or old) lab results have been released.

In that same live video, Bamford-Connors and Bamford also questioned the validity of the lab results. Bamford stated the results were illogical because there is no number a computer can’t read; therefore “TNTC” would be impossible. Other contaminants were listed as “<10,” which indicated to them that the scale used by the lab was skewed: their results showed the contaminants were too high simply because the lab set the bar too low. That video has since been deleted: “I took it down the bully’s said we were being bullies and it was making things worse,” Bamford explained on Facebook.

Anresco Laboraties is an ISO/IEC accredited company, and is recognized by the FDA. They are recognized by other botanical vendors, as well. Anresco provided the tests of the kratom strains in questions, but kratom is just one of the products they test. When the original Facebook post was made with the lab results attached, the poster invited everyone to check with the lab to confirm the results were real. Despite the public invitation, due to confidentiality agreements, that was not able to be done. I reached out to Kelly Dunn, and he allowed me to gain access through the lab to ask questions. I spoke with several Anresco employees via email and over the phone.

Currently, the kratom industry is highly unregulated. There are no set standards, legally, vendors need to follow in regards to obtaining their products, how the products are stored, what the products are tested for, etc. This has led to a lot of what consumers are calling “kitchen vendors,” i.e., vendors who work out of their homes, or vendors who otherwise have no health and safety standards they uphold to send their products to retail. As the DEA continues its fight against kratom, the lack of health standards adds to their argument that it is not a safe product for consumption. Be that as it may, since kratom can be safely consumed, it’s reasonable to lean towards a compromise: regulation. Regulation is in the best interest of the consumer to insure the products they’re getting aren’t tainted or otherwise harmful. This is where cGMP comes into play.

According to the FDA, the DS cGMP (Dietary SupplementsCurrent Good Manufacturing Practice) rule requires vendors to take samples from their products to be tested before they go live to sell, and then the product is to remain under quarantine until the test results come back and show the product is safe for consumption. Taunton Bay Soap Company claims to follow cGMP guidelines, however, the products in question were sent to retail even though no test results had come back, by their own admission.

In order to determine what is safe for consumers, Anresco Labs follow the guidelines laid out by the American Herbal Products Association, or AHPA. “AHPA’s mission is to promote the responsible commerce of herbal products to ensure that consumers continue to enjoy informed access to a wide variety of herbal goods.” AHPA standards are very close to being identical to the standards given by WHO, the World Health Organization, which is widely recognized for food safety standards. Click here for a PDF comparison of microbiallimits by company. For Anresco specifically, yeast and mold counts should be 10 to the 5^th  (100,000) colony-forming units (cfu)/grams or below. The results state TNTC because the number of mold colonies is higher than 10 to the 5^th power. On one of the lab results, yeast is also listed as “TNTC,” which means colonies of yeast were not able to be determined, and the lab informed me that happened because the mold count was so elevated. This doesn’t mean the product is unsafe or harmful to consume; it’s a spectrum that lends itself to the quality of the product, not safe vs unsafe. The actual number of colonies can be determined, but that would take additional testing. With that being said, what we do know is the numbers in question are above 10 to the 5^th power cfu/grams (more than 100,000.)

Click here to view a summary of this information on Anresco's website.

**Edited to add: Lab employees explained that the mold is not due storage or age of the product: it accumulated prior to the leaves being dried and crushed.

I verified with the lab that the numbers indicating the standards the lab goes by cannot be arbitrarily changed on client request. The lab is a nonbiased party.

It’s important to remember that there is mold in many, many food and dietary supplement products, and it’s not something that is inherently dangerous to consume. These results don’t show that the products are unsafe, only that contaminants have been detected, and the number of contaminants is higher than what would be nationally recognized as standard. In my humble opinion, kratom will eventually be looked at as a dietary supplement, or at least in the food category because it is consumed, and regulations will be put in place, as it is with other supplements. As consumers, we are given the right to know what’s in the products we are putting into our bodies, and this is just one of those cases.

This may be a two part series as there’s more to the story than what I've included here, so stay tuned. There is definitely more tea (or more to the story) as to the real reason the labs were done to begin with. The labs are real, that is a proven fact. But there’s two sides to every story, and then there’s the truth; if I hear from any parties involved and have updates, I will keep you updated. I look forward to continuing conversations and starting new ones.

To see if kratom is legal in your state, click here.
For my personal kratom story, click here.

For more information on kratom in general, click here and check out the American Kratom Association's website.