AKA GMP Qualified Kratom
Whole Earth, our house brand, is AKA GMP Qualified. The program qualifies the manufacturer that makes a product, not the store that sells it. This page is what that qualification checks. What it costs us. And what it does not claim.
Who awards it
The American Kratom Association. It’s a private nonprofit founded in 2014. It argues for kratom to be regulated rather than banned.
Naming the obvious: it is an advocacy organization. It is not a regulator and not a government agency. What follows is an industry program run by an industry group. Read it that way. The group itself, how it’s funded, and what it has and has not achieved is on our page about the American Kratom Association.
What GMP means, before the kratom part
Good Manufacturing Practice is not a kratom idea. It’s the standard framework for making food and consumer goods to a known specification. It runs across industries.
GMP is usually described in five pillars. The shorthand is that all five start with the same letter.
- People. Who does the work, how they were trained, and who is accountable for each step.
- Premises. The building itself. Cleanliness. Separation. Pest control. Air and water. How the space is laid out.
- Processes. How the work is actually performed, written down before it happens rather than described afterward.
- Products. The material, and what it is measured against. Identity, purity, strength, composition. And the testing that checks them.
- Procedures. The documentation. Written instructions. Records of what was done. The paper trail that lets somebody else verify it.
The AKA’s manufacturing requirements are largely based on 21 CFR Part 111. That’s the federal good manufacturing practice rule. Participation does not require a product to be labeled as a dietary supplement. So the program takes an established framework and points it at one plant.
That’s the useful thing to understand about GMP. It does not grade the leaf. It grades the operation making the product. Is it run in a way that produces the same result twice?
What the program checks
The program is built around an independent third-party inspection. It covers three things: the vendor’s facilities, their manufacturing documentation, and the product labels themselves.
The inspection examines manufacturing, packaging, labeling and storage. It asks one question. Does the product match the specification the vendor set for it? Identity, purity, strength, composition. Whether the leaf in the pouch is the leaf on the label, in the condition the label describes.
The labeling half is built on the AKA’s model Kratom Consumer Protection Act. That’s the same bill the group pushes in state legislatures.
What it takes to keep it
Qualification is not a form filled out once. A vendor registers, pays a fee, and has 90 days to complete an audit. The auditor and the testing laboratory both have to be approved by the AKA in advance. A vendor can’t shop for a friendly inspector. The AKA reviews the audit report before granting the designation. The whole cycle repeats every year, against a fresh audit and a fresh fee.
It can also be taken away. The AKA’s registration terms name seven reasons it may remove a pending or qualified member.
- Falling out of compliance with the required standards of the program.
- Failing to pay the annual registration fee.
- Failing to submit an annual audit from an AKA approved auditor.
- Failing to correct any audit findings identified in the audit report.
- Multiple reports of adverse events associated with the participant’s marketed products.
- Violations of the AKA’s Truth in Labeling program.
- Actions that negatively impact the good standing and reputation of the AKA.
The seventh is worth reading twice. It’s broader than the other six. And it rests on the AKA’s own judgment rather than on an auditor’s finding. We’re printing it because you should know the terms we agreed to.
What we pay, and why we are telling you
We paid a registration fee to enter this program, and we pay again every year to hold it.
The AKA’s revenue comes from three places. Vendor program fees, donations, and vendor sponsorships. So the group that qualifies us is funded in part by the vendors it qualifies. That is how trade associations generally work. It is not a scandal. It is a fact you need in order to read the list correctly.
We disclose it for one reason. A qualification somebody paid for is worth exactly as much as the auditing behind it. You can’t judge the auditing if nobody mentions the payment. The program requirements and the qualified vendor list are both published openly. You can read the terms yourself without asking us anything.
What it does not mean
The AKA is direct about this, and so are we.
Its own registration page says the program is not an endorsement of the safety or quality of any specific finished kratom product. Qualification covers the facility and the process. The AKA does not vouch for the product itself. A qualified vendor is not permitted to suggest that it does. Being on the list is not an endorsement of the vendor, the company, or anything on the shelf.
It is not approval by the Food and Drug Administration, which has approved no kratom product for any use. It doesn’t release a vendor from any law that would otherwise apply. And it says nothing whatsoever about what kratom does to a person. Nothing on this page should be read that way.
Why we hold it anyway
Because the alternative is asking you to take our word for it.
Kratom has no mandatory federal manufacturing standard. Without one, a buyer has two things to work with. Whether an outside party has inspected the operation that made the product. And whether the lab tested kratom reports are published where anyone can read them. Whole Earth has both. We’d rather be measured against something than describe ourselves in adjectives.
The AKA’s list is public and sits on its own website. Whole Earth is not the only name on it, and you can check it without asking us.