How to grow and process glutein free cereals

[Jussi Knaapi]

As a farmer and advisor/writer, plus following these things I started to check, if or not optical graders can really glean foreing kernels away from oats. Checking this, because we have a few mills/processors who do the optical grading and claim it cleans (i.e under 25 ppm glutein) the material well enough. And the we also have a mills who do it 100 % clean. Meaning very strict protocalls from field to consumer. 

So I really doubt if optical grading will do it right, what is your opinion?

[Scott Adams]

It would be good to know more about what you mean by "we also have a mills who do it 100 % clean." Do you mean these oat farmers do not grow any wheat in their fields, share transportation equipment, and don't mill any gluten containing grains? 

Of course this would be the ideal, however, this creates expensive products, thus General Mills spent millions inventing the sorting technology you are referring to. My understanding is that their technology actually guarantees the end product is under 20ppm, otherwise they could not put "gluten-free" on their labels. I also know that they've been working to improve their technology to get this to below 10ppm.

So far there have been various claims that there could somehow be "hot spots" in their cereals like Cheerios, yet nobody seems to be able to find them on a consistent basis. The technology seems to do what it claims to do, and certainly General Mills is staking a great deal on this--here in the USA, for example, their liability could easily be in the billions of dollars via a class action lawsuit if they were wrong about this.

We've written extensively on this topic:

 

 

[Jussi Knaapi]

Scott, I do exactly refer (100 % clean) to this one specialist Mill, who has it "all the way" - no other grains on farm, clean trucks, process line solely to Oats in separate building. Also control on fields, advising  - all you can do to keep it clean. Very much different than what  the other Mills do by trying to keep it "sort of ok", in other word less than 20 ppm. The price point discussion is endless. The fact remains at least here, the share a farmer gets, is minimal anyway. So if customer wants clean, the little extra price is worth paying. Put the problem lies on farm end also, only few wants or can grow this way. For example the A1 seed is so mixed up  (2 - 4 x more foreign grains than is allowed at least for 20 ppm stuff), that they simply can't use that "dirty" oats seed to start with, lots of rogueing needed!

 

[Scott Adams]

You probably understand that these pure oat farmers could not possibly supply companies like General Mills with enough oats at a reasonable price point that they would not have to drastically increase their prices, thus they pursued their own technology to deal with contamination.

Canada responded by protecting their pure oat farmers and won't allow GM to put "gluten-free" on their boxes, even though the law in Canada is that something is gluten-free if it is under 20ppm. They created a new category of products that might fall into the 5-20ppm range, which to me seems more like protectionism than good policy, as 20ppm is either a safe limit or it isn't:

 In any case, I do think it is fair to take the cost of the end product into consideration. It isn't fair to create "100% safe" gluten-free products that would be unaffordable to most people, so being able to be gluten-free would be based on your income level. GM is trying to create safe GF products that are affordable to everyone.

[Jussi Knaapi]

11 minutes ago, Scott Adams said:

You probably understand that these pure oat farmers could not possibly supply companies like General Mills with enough oats at a reasonable price point that they would not have to drastically increase their prices, thus they pursued their own technology to deal with contamination.

Canada responded by protecting their pure oat farmers and won't allow GM to put "gluten-free" on their boxes, even though the law in Canada is that something is gluten-free if it is under 20ppm. They created a new category of products that might fall into the 5-20ppm range, which to me seems more like protectionism than good policy, as 20ppm is either a safe limit or it isn't:

 In any case, I do think it is fair to take the cost of the end product into consideration. It isn't fair to create "100% safe" gluten-free products that would be unaffordable to most people, so being able to be gluten-free would be based on your income level. GM is trying to create safe gluten-free products that are affordable to everyone.

Well, customer desides and 100 % clean is bought by the ones who value 100 % clean, simple to me. Actually the "20 ppm Mills" make good markets to "100 % clean product". Quality pays.  To think about the price, as a european (I have lived a year in US though....), I don't understand, why you don't simply make & eat your own Oats porrige? It's easy, healtier, fresh, cheap as any, tastes better and you can controll the cleanliness. Some even use a tabletop little rollermill (from Austria) and have it even better.  

Thank you for the article's they were very informative.