Imagine your favorite restaurant; you love it because of the atmosphere, the staff, and of course THE FOOD.
Now imagine if one day you found out the employees don’t wash their hands, they serve expired food, and pigs are running around freely in the kitchen.
You would think twice about eating there - right?
Thankfully, most customers of food establishments don’t have to worry about those kinds of conditions, because for restaurants to stay in business, they must pass all sorts of inspections, meet standards that ensure customer safety and receive permits ensuring they're safe.
Unfortunately in the Kratom world, there aren’t any laws put in place yet, so clean and safe practices aren’t “required” to sell the product.
The vendors who do not practice sanitary production are the ones who give Kratom a bad reputation. This is why Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) are so important.
So, what is GMP Certification?
GMP stands for Good Manufacturing Practices. This list of standards that establishes a higher level of manufacturing processes to ensure consumer safety, pureness, and effectiveness.
Fun Fact #1: Out of thousands of kratom vendors, Happy Hippo is one of only 30 vendors certified with GMP!
The outline of standards the vendor must follow is reviewed by an annual 3rd party audit (our auditor is accredited by the American Kratom Association).
This outline includes
- Standard Operating Procedures
- Record-keeping, Adverse Event Reporting System and Recalls
- Reputable Marketing Practices
- State Regulation
- Compliance
One could read through the entire Good Manufacturing Practices document on the American Kratom Association Website - but we’ve summarized that information for our readers below.
Standard Operating Procedures
- Personnel: This states that every employee hired by Happy Hippo must practice good hygiene, have a good understanding of procedures to prevent microbial contamination from sick or infected personnel, and must be well trained on how to package Kratom correctly and safely. There must be documentation proving the employee went through this training.
- Manufacturing Facility and Equipment: This confirms the work area is clean and safe for all our Hippos. Constant cleaning and sanitation of equipment is a must and our Production Hippos take pride in doing this!
- Manufacturing Operations: Our Production Hippos are in charge of making sure every batch of Kratom we deal with goes through a 5 step process, all while documenting it for our records.
The 5 Steps are
- Receiving Material
- Quarantine
- Production/Processing
- Packaging
- Storage and Sale
A photo of our Production Room - Est. July 2019. This is where the magic happens!
When the product is first delivered to us, we always check it has been cleared and tested for any yucky materials, including heavy metals, contaminants and synthetic drugs.
Fun Fact #2: Normal requirements for Kratom testing is a minimum of 10% of the batch - we always test more than 10%, and we do that with every batch!Recordkeeping
- Generally: If any of our customers think their batch is a little ‘off’, we usually ask for the lot number. We then go to our storage of all our past batches (up to 2 years old) and we match that number with a sample we have of the same lot. The sample then gets shipped off for additional testing!
- Master Manufacturing Records: This is a record we follow for each unique formulation of Kratom to ensure uniformity. In this paperwork we track the weights of all the filled bags, we ensure all the bags are new and clean, labeled correctly, and that our Production Hippos have an easy checklist of steps to go through when filling bags.
- Traceability: Double verification is needed for production of every product to be complete; we have a Hippo Packer sign off followed by our Quality Control Manager signing off as well.
Adverse Event Reporting System and Recalls
Whenever a customer reports they've gotten sick from our Kratom, we don’t turn a blind eye like many other vendors. We go through a protocol and ask the questions needed, submit a report and do another series of tests on that batch.
We're required to have a Recall Procedure in place for any Kratom recalls.
Reputable Marketing Practices
Our Hippo customers must understand we cannot make medical claims.
Our packaging must reflect all disclaimers and notice, some examples stated below
- Kratom is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition; and our packaging clearly states that.
- We are not allowed to give a specific serving size for anyone - although we can recommend where to start
- No pregnant Hippo’s should be using Kratom!
- Batch numbers and labels are required on every package we sell
Here are many photos from our Production - it's rare you'll see a Kratom packaging facility this clean!
Closing Thoughts
In conclusion, we can assure all our customers we're not named Happy Hippo because we have wild hippos running around the production room.
Any individual who wants to purchase high-quality, lab-tested Kratom - is safe to do so with us!
Happy Hippo LLC takes pride in being Good Manufacturing Process (GMP) certified and providing our customers with a place to buy kratom safely.
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