On February 26, 2020, the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) took a significant step toward allaying industry
concerns by announcing that it delaying enforcement of the interim
final rule (IFR) requirement that hemp producers only use testing
laboratories registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA).
When the IFR was published in late October of 2019, it faced
near-immediate criticism from industry participants and
stakeholders who, among other things, voiced concerns that the DEA
registration requirement would create a bottleneck given capacity
issues. Appearing to respond to those critiques, the USDA explained
that its enforcement discretion "will allow additional time to
increase DEA registered analytical lab capacity."
