Barley in my gluten-free enzymes, manufacturer says "it's OK"

[Gloria L]

One of the ingredients in my Enzyscience critical digestion enzyme is Maltase (the label says contain no: egg, dairy, preservatives, salt, sucrose, soy, wheat, yeast, nuts, corn, gluten, casein, potato, artificial colors or flavors), I called the company to know the source of it and they told me exactly like this "Barley is used but due to our purification process our final product does not have it, so our product is gluten free", Is this even possible?

[RMJ]

Maltase is not malt.  Maltase is an enzyme that digests the sugar maltose. 

As to their using barley and the purification process - yes it is possible to separate different types of proteins during purification, but they don’t give enough information to evaluate whether all gluten from barley is removed.  For example, it would be nice to know if they test the product for barley gluten, and if so, what their acceptable limit is.

[Gloria L]

Hello, I know that maltase is not malt, but I saw an article here on this forum saying that it is common for the maltase in digestive enzymes to be made from barley that's what made me call the manufacturer. It would have been nice to know if the final product doesn't have it at all or what the acceptable limit is as you say. Since I don't know I stopped it.

 

[Scott Adams]

The article is quite old, and is archived, but it is possible to process an ingredient, for example hydrolyzed wheat protein, to the point where it would test below 20ppm. That said, you would need to decide whether or not you would like to include this in your diet. It is likely gluten-free, but apparently does use barley to make that ingredient. It might be better to find an alternative product that doesn't include this ingredient.