By Alex Rumi
Some of our products are irradiated. Some are not. The answer depends on the format, the strain, and the specific lot, and we think you should be able to find out which is which before you buy. Irradiation is a microbial reduction step widely used across the Canadian cannabis industry, and how a producer handles it tells you something about their growing method, their post-harvest process, and how much they're willing to say out loud about both.
Here's where GOOD BUDS stands, product by product.
What Irradiation Actually Is
Cannabis irradiation in Canada uses electron-beam (e-beam) or gamma radiation to reduce microbial contamination—mould, yeast, and bacteria—to levels that meet Health Canada's requirements for sale. Every licensed cannabis product must pass microbial testing before it reaches a retail shelf. If a lot fails that testing, the producer can irradiate it and retest, or destroy it.
Irradiation doesn't change the cannabinoid content in any meaningful way. THC and CBD levels remain stable. What it can affect is terpenes. Some volatile terpene compounds degrade under irradiation, which means a lot that's been irradiated may test slightly lower in total terpenes than the same material would have tested before treatment.
It’s the trade-off. The product passes microbial testing and is safe to sell. Some terpene expression may be lost in the process.
Why It's Needed (Sometimes)
Cannabis is an agricultural product, and microbial contamination is a reality of farming, especially outdoor farming, where the plants spend months exposed to wind, rain, insects, soil microbes, and whatever the Gulf Islands decide to throw at them in a given season.
Indoor growing environments are more controlled, which is why indoor flower tend to pass microbial testing at higher rates without irradiation. However, "more controlled" doesn't mean sterile. Even indoor facilities deal with contamination, and it’s a more widespread issue than the industry would care to communicate, especially in the larger-scale mega-facilities where controlling an outbreak is extremely difficult.
The question isn't really whether irradiation exists in the industry. It does, widely. The question is whether a producer will tell you about it.
Where GOOD BUDS Stands, by Product
Mango Cake flower (3.5g, 7g): Has never required irradiation. We grow it in micro-batches inside double-wide shipping containers, with each cultivation room having its own separate HVAC and air filtration system to control and prevent potential outbreaks. That's by design. Most indoor facilities prioritise mass production and efficiency, which leaves plants more exposed. Our setup runs opposite to that, and Mango Cake consistently passes microbial testing without treatment. Our flower labels reflect this with "FVOPA Certified Organic" on them. Pre-roll labels are too small to fit this, but they typically aren't irradiated either.
Vapes (cured resin, live resin, live rosin): Do not require irradiation. The extraction process itself handles microbial loads. Hydrocarbon extraction and subsequent purging produce a concentrate that consistently passes microbial testing without further treatment. This is true across all our vape formats. Live rosin is a bit different in that it doesn't use hydrocarbons, but it goes through a decarboxylation step before being loaded into the vape. Essentially a sous-vide-like bath in warm water that converts THCa to THC, making it bioavailable for vape consumption. The process also kills any residual microbes.
Outdoor flower (Gluerangutan, Timewarp): Some lots require irradiation, some don't. Our pass rate without irradiation has improved significantly as we've refined our post-harvest handling, with dramatic improvements to drying room conditions, airflow, timing, and moisture management. Roughly 80% of outdoor flower lots now pass microbial testing without irradiation. That's up from closer to zero in our early harvests, and the improvement is directly tied to what we've learned about managing the drying and curing environment. The 20% that do require irradiation aren't lower-quality lots. They picked up slightly higher microbial loads during the growing season: Think a particularly wet week, or a denser canopy section. Conditions we can manage but can't entirely eliminate when plants are growing outside in living soil.
Infused pre-rolls: Almost always require irradiation. Health Canada categorises them as inhalable extracts, which means they must pass far more stringent microbial limits, roughly 1/10th of the dry flower thresholds. A lot might carry similar microbe levels to our dry flower on its own, but because it's labelled as an inhalable extract, it needs irradiation to hit that lower bar. This applies to every infused pre-roll on the market, not just ours.
What This Means for "Organic" on the Label
This is where it gets complicated, and where we want to be straightforward.
GOOD BUDS is FVOPA Certified Organic at the farm level. Our soil, our inputs, our cultivation practices, all of it meets the Fraser Valley Organic Producers Association standard, audited annually. That certification is real and it applies to everything we grow. So our cannabis is always 100% free of synthetic pesticides, nutrients or any other non-organic inputs. That’s true no matter what.
However, irradiation is not permitted under organic certification standards. A product that has been irradiated cannot be labelled as "Certified Organic," even if the cannabis inside it was grown in certified organic soil using certified organic practices.
So we use two terms:
Certified Organic: For products where the entire chain, from soil to shelf, meets the FVOPA standard. This applies to our indoor Mango Cake flower and to the outdoor flower lots that pass microbial testing without irradiation. Where space on the label permits (i.e., dry flower), you’ll see a “FVOPA Certified Organic” on the label.
Living Soil Organic: For products where the cultivation is organic but the final product underwent irradiation as a post-harvest step, or for any vape, which we can’t call certified organic because of the vape hardware itself. The growing method is identical. The soil is the same. The inputs are the same. But the irradiation step means we can't put "Certified Organic" on the label, and we won't pretend otherwise.
We could just call everything "organic" and hope nobody asks. We'd rather explain the distinction and let you decide what matters to you.
What We're Doing About It
Irradiation isn't something we've accepted as permanent. Every season, the team led by Tyler and our outdoor cultivation manager Ryan works on reducing the percentage of lots that require treatment.
The improvements are practical, not theoretical. Better airflow in the drying room. Tighter moisture monitoring during the hang-dry phase. Learning which sections of the outdoor canopy are more prone to microbial pressure and adjusting harvest timing accordingly. Tracking the weather more precisely in the final weeks before harvest and making pull decisions based on what's coming, not just what the trichomes look like.
"The goal is to get every outdoor lot through clean," says Tyler Rumi, co-founder and cultivation lead. "We're not there yet. But every season the numbers get better because we understand the drying environment better. These small adjustments aren’t glamorous, but they’re the difference between 60% clean and 80% clean, and eventually, something closer to 100%."
We doubt we'll ever hit 100% on our outdoor flower. The plants are outside, in soil, exposed to a living environment. That's the trade-off of growing the way we grow. But we'll keep pushing the number higher, and we'll keep telling you where it stands.
Why We're Writing This
Most producers don't talk about irradiation publicly. We get why. It's not a fun marketing story. "Some of our products are irradiated" doesn't go on a poster.
But if you're someone who cares enough about cannabis to read a blog post about how it's produced — and you're reading this, so you probably are — then you deserve to know the full picture. Irradiation is part of that picture for almost every licensed producer in Canada, whether they talk about it or not. We'd rather talk about it and be transparent about it.
Alex Rumi is co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at GOOD BUDS, a FVOPA Certified Organic cannabis farm on Salt Spring Island, BC. He has worked in the licensed Canadian cannabis industry since 2017.
