Buckwheat Groats

[currier54]

I'm trying to track down a safe source of buckwheat groats - I understand they're easily CC'd in the field, as with all grains/pseudograins - and stumbled upon a garlic farm that uses buckwheat as a cover crop, and harvests and sells it as well.  This seemed promising, so I contacted them to find out how it is handled, and this was their response:

"Thanks for your inquiry!  So the buckwheat is harvested with a combine that has harvested wheat and other grains.  It is cleaned out between harvests, because you don't want seeds mixing. The grain is then run through a sorter.  This sorts out any weed seeds and gets it down to just the buckwheat seeds. This too is a shared piece of equipment, and this too is cleaned between different grains.  Once it's just the buckwheat, we hauled it to a facility that  de-hulls it. This facility is a gluten free facility. De-hulling buckwheat is not an easy process, and there are few facilities that can do it. We were happy to find a gluten free one.  The buckwheat is then packaged at a gluten free facility, our farm processing kitchen. I hope that this helps you with your decision. I have not had the buckwheat tested to see if it has trace amounts of gluten. "

Would you consider this to be safe?  I'm on the fence but leaning toward yes, just because any possible gluten residue would be on the hull, which is then removed, and is gluten-free from then on.

That said, I seem to react to super-low levels of gluten, and am still recovering from being burned by some teff that I was sure was safe (they said they plant alfalfa first before the teff, and the processing plant was 100% gluten free.)

[Scott Adams]

If you are super sensitive this doesn't sound safe enough to me. Have you contacted Bob's Red Mill, as they offer gluten-free buckwheat?

[currier54]

I do see that Bob's has a dedicated gluten free facility, but I'm guessing there'd still be the CC issue in the field.  I do see that they do some in-house testing, which would be a good thing.

Honestly, though, I think I'm going to hold off of re-intruducing grains for a bit...and grow some myself next year; no time like the present to learn! 😉 That and some dry beans.  I've got a garden, might as use the space to grow the high-risk stuff, and get the rest from a CSA.