General Mills Describes the Success of its Gluten Detection System

[Scott Adams]

Talk about finding needles in a haystack. Imagine, if you will, sifting through rail cars full of oats and plucking out nearly every stray grain of wheat, barley or rye so that the final product tests at under 20 ppm, instead of the original 200 ppm to 1,000 ppm.

Quite a challenge, yes? It's a challenge General Mills take on every day as it produces Gluten Free Cheerios from raw oats into the final product. According to their website, General Mills ships 500,000 cases of Cheerios each week.

To do this, General Mills uses a proprietary optical sorting process, for which it has filed a patent with the US Patent Office. That process sifts through those rail cars of oats, with stray gluten ranging from 200 ppm to 1,000 ppm, and "takes it down to less than 20" ppm, said Paul Wehling, principal scientist for General Mills.

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[cyclinglady]

45 minutes ago, admin said:

Talk about finding needles in a haystack. Imagine, if you will, sifting through rail cars full of oats and plucking out nearly every stray grain of wheat, barley or rye so that the final product tests at under 20 ppm, instead of the original 200 ppm to 1,000 ppm.

Quite a challenge, yes? It's a challenge General Mills take on every day as it produces Gluten Free Cheerios from raw oats into the final product. According to their website, General Mills ships 500,000 cases of Cheerios each week.

To do this, General Mills uses a proprietary optical sorting process, for which it has filed a patent with the US Patent Office. That process sifts through those rail cars of oats, with stray gluten ranging from 200 ppm to 1,000 ppm, and "takes it down to less than 20" ppm, said Paul Wehling, principal scientist for General Mills.

View the full article

 An independent gluten advocate, The Gluten Free Watchdog,  (meaning does not take any sponsorship and has no financial ties to any product), is still advising against mechanically sorted oats.  Why?  

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It is good to hear that the vast majority of companies are following gluten-free guidelines.  That is very encouraging!  

[Ennis-TX]

26 minutes ago, cyclinglady said:

 An independent gluten advocate, The Gluten Free Watchdog,  (meaning does not take any sponsorship and has no financial ties to any product), is still advising against mechanically sorted oats.  Why?  

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It is good to hear that the vast majority of companies are following gluten-free guidelines.  That is very encouraging!  

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Adding to this, yes this was done years ago but the same protocols are still in place...welcome to look at the huge holes in current testing practices and those of us that are super sensitive. I just fear parents who give kids then 5-20ppm products that might have a hot spot in them who do not do research into these. And those who have silent celiac.....so many of us have noticed symptoms on the so called gluten-free versions you got to question the true safety of said products. But it might be like me and just be that 10% that react to even pure oats.

[Scott Adams]

The hot spots are pure theory unsupported by any actual evidence. Honestly, if celiacs want to drive up prices and see a lot fewer items marked with a gluten-free label, then keep pushing for lower levels (the unattainable zero gluten, for example). Industry just needs reasonable, fair, and unchanging rules to operate under, which is what we have now. The FDA is monitoring this:

https://www.celiac.com/articles/24934/1/Strong-Compliance-with-Gluten-Free-Standards-Mean-Consumers-Can-Buy-With-Confidence/Page1.html

and isn't finding issues. Additionally, people with home test kits are testing as well:

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I suspect Honey Nut Cheerios could be your only concern, as some boxes may fall in the 10-20 ppm zone, but I doubt they fall in the above 20 ppm area. 

 

I've seen a world where only small players make expensive products for gluten-free people...things are far better now, and prices will continue to go down as long as we don't suddenly change the rules.

[Ennis-TX]

13 hours ago, admin said:

The hot spots are pure theory unsupported by any actual evidence.

Just  going to say, "Hot Spots" from one or two grains getting into and causing contamination are a statistical inevitability. The fact is it is going to happen and their is hardly anything you can do about it on field with crop rotations and shared harvesting equipment. THERE is I always say another option form companies that follow a different protocol such as not growing wheat in the fields used for 5+ years. And owning and using only equipment for oats and oat transport. Unfortunate I only know of 2 companies that do this and it is more expensive.

As for pricing, quality and safety is worth paying for, as is sanity. "Gluten Free" is  becoming such a "Fad" diet trend now that those of us who medically have to have it are becoming the laughing stock in addition having to suffer from companies and people brushing it off as no big deal now days.

Speaking of hot spots....huge issues this year with hemp and CC with hot spots......more so then normal as the market for it as increased and the quality/purity of acquired product is going down. 8 out of 11lbs of hemp I bought in the last 6 months has been contaminated. Same issue with oats in it being grown in rotation, but unlike oats no kind of sorting is being used.....guess it is a sign as to how well they are doing with the oats so props with that actually.

[Scott Adams]

Anything…any product could theoretically be contaminated with a hot spot, so singling out one company as being more likely to have a spot spot over another isn’t helpful, Unless you can pull for 10 boxes of that company’s product and test them all and find one or two over the limit. This hasn’t been done so far with General Mills. General Mill also mills their oats into flour AFTER the optical sorting procedure, so how could there be a single hot spot in flour that has been milled and mixed? Additionally when somebody eats a bowl of cereal, they don’t eat just one piece of cereal....they eat an entire bowl. I realize the ultimate goal is zero but this goal cannot be our labeling standard because it’s impossible to comply with a zero standard, and companies would simply stop putting Gluten-Free on their labels. How helpful with this be to celiacs?

Additionally the Canadian celiac association has been making very irresponsible comments about General Mills and their products. They have have been quoted as saying that perhaps every third or fifth box are contaminated above 20 ppm, but they have offered zero evidence of this. Don’t you think if the contamination issue were that bad anyone could pull 10 boxes off the shelf and have them tested and simply sue the hell out of General Mills?

Do you think General Mills hasn’t tested thousands of boxes of their cereal to make sure they’re safe? I mean this is a company with deep pockets that would have lawyers lining up to sue them if this were the case.