NEW:

At a major public-listening session related to lab fraud today, Massachusetts CCC Commissioners announced that Commissioner Ava Concepcion will be returning tomorrow (a strange development, seeing as Concepcion will be leaving again, before January of 2025).

CCC Commissioner Kimberly Roy --known as a hero throughout the state for being the first person to bring up the issue of lab fraud, years ago-- also announced that she is pushing for the de-anonymized release of all testing lab data in the state (data that will show, according to my sources, at least 3-4 labs with a failure rate for total year and mold that is either at, around, or below 4% (some labs have fail rates for yeast and mold that is close to zero).

That said, for now, because the CCC has only released potency data, I am taking this opportunity to release multiple years of total yeast and mold results for the Commonwealth (which have been released to multiple people but, for some reason, were not put on the CCC website) - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10HaUR9rTfprnRtuJEOUQFjcJyiuDkFpG?usp=sharing

Acting Chair Bruce Stebbins also doubled down, before the meeting started, and told the public and stakeholders that the CCC’s “secret shopper program” (to catch lab fraud) does exist, despite reporting on this feed (and confirmed by CCC staff, also per this feed) that such a program does not actually exist. Read that reporting here - https://www.patreon.com/posts/follow-up-ccc-of-115104903

However, during a flurry of conversations Thursday afternoon, I can now confirm, again, that no CCC teams exist to conduct such purchases, of any kind. It is possible that “a small number” of purchases have been made for the purposes of confirmatory re-testing, but, per my sources, there is no ongoing program and no organized structure to administer such off-the-shelf testing.

Listen to my full comments from today, where I explain to the CCC exactly how they can ward off further judicial erosion of Chevron-deference (an ongoing situation wherein the courts, in particular SCOTUS, are taking power away from regulatory agencies because courts no longer view such agencies as subject-matter experts), be proscriptive as to the standardization of testing methodologies, and (although I should have said more about this), actually pay their staff for the work they are doing (in particular if that secret shopper program does eventually come online).

Also, to be clear, anyone trying to remove yeast and mold testing entirely is a subversive market actor, interested only in their own profits. You cannot, and will not, win a regulatory battle to allow you to sell moldy products to patients and consumers (that very much have a health impact).

This post originally appeared here - https://www.instagram.com/p/DCFfnnnMEoX/