What a Certificate of Analysis is, and how to ask for one

A Certificate of Analysis is the laboratory report for a specific batch of material. Every serious supplement brand holds them. Very few publish them, and almost none are asked for them.

What a Certificate of Analysis contains

A COA is issued by whoever tested the material, either the supplier or an independent lab. A complete one names the material, the batch or lot number, the date, the tests run, the method used for each, the result, and the specification the result is measured against.

For a plant extract you would expect to see the standardisation figure confirmed by HPLC, plus heavy metals and microbial limits. For a finished blend you would expect heavy metals and microbial limits at minimum.

Ingredient COA versus finished product COA

These are different documents and the distinction matters.

An ingredient COA covers one raw material before it goes into anything. It is issued by the supplier and it tells you the ashwagandha extract really was 5% withanolides when it arrived.

A finished product COA covers the blend after it is made. It tells you what is in the pouch you were sent.

A brand holding only ingredient COAs can tell you what it bought. It cannot tell you what came out the other end. Both are worth having and only one of them is common.

How to read a COA without being a chemist

You do not need to understand the chromatography. Four checks cover most of it.

• Does the batch number match your pouch? This is the one that catches people out. A report for a different lot tells you nothing about yours.
• Is there a date, and is it recent? A report from two years ago covers material that has long since been used.
• Is a specification printed beside each result? A number with nothing to compare it to is not a pass or a fail.
• Who issued it? A named laboratory with contact details, or an unbranded PDF that could have been typed by anyone.

The email to send

Short and specific works better than a general enquiry. Something like:

Could you send the Certificate of Analysis for batch [number on my pouch]? I am looking for heavy metals, microbial limits, and the standardisation figures for the extracts.

What comes back tells you more than the document itself. A brand that tests per batch replies with the right lot. A brand that does not will send a general certificate, an ingredient COA in place of a finished one, or a paragraph explaining why they cannot share it.

None of those are necessarily dishonest. They are all informative.

Why brands do not publish them

Cost is part of it. Testing every batch and holding the paperwork is a real expense that a cheap product cannot carry, which is one of the things separating a 600 rupee tub from a 2,500 rupee one. Our piece on what a greens powder should cost goes through that in detail.

The other part is that a published COA is a commitment. Once the number is public, anyone can compare it to the claim on the front of the pack.

What a COA does not cover

It is a document about composition and safety. It says nothing about whether the formula does anything, and a clean COA is not evidence of benefit. That is a separate question, and one where the standardisation figure is often quoted as though it were a result.

Where SWATVA stands

Batch reports cover heavy metals and microbial limits, and we say exactly that rather than implying they cover potency or efficacy. The heavy metals piece explains what that testing does and does not catch, and the label decoder covers the other checks worth running on any pack, ours included.

The first run is 55 pouches. Applying takes four minutes and nothing is charged.