Is Gluten Food Testing a Secret?

[GardeningForHealth]

Even though I have been on the gluten-free diet for 10 years now, I continue to experience either food intolerances or exposures to gluten; I do not know which it is (or it could be both). These exposures cause illness in the form of fatigue, brain fog, and increased vertigo/dizziness, that are significant enough to impact my ability to be productive and mentally present. 

When I came to this forum I saw that many people here are experiencing these same problems. Yet, we do not know the truth; is it food intolerances, or exposures to gluten? 

In the interest of uncovering the facts and the truth of the matter, I have begun to contact companies requesting their gluten testing. But the responses that I am getting are, so far, not good; they are as follows:

1. Our gluten testing is proprietary 
2. We do not do any gluten testing of our finished products, even though our products have a gluten-free label; we trust our suppliers--they are doing the testing
3. Yes, we do ELISA gluten testing on our products, but we do not share that information

Now, over the years, and recently, I have contacted various companies requesting their COA--Certificate of Analysis. This is a laboratory report showing basic information about the product such as if it has Ecoli or sometimes heavy metals; I have found that some companies will share their COA, and some won't. 

But, so far, zero companies that I have contacted have been willing to share their gluten testing with me. 

Why is that? When I asked the companies why they do not share this information, the contact stops; they do not reply back.

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Some may be reading this post and asking why I want to go to such lengths, especially when many companies have detailed pages on their websites explaining all the different protocols they are doing to ensure their foods are free from gluten. This is because, as detailed on this site, Mom's Across America did their own testing and found some "gluten-free" labeled products to contain gluten, and therefore I have come to see company's web pages explaining their gluten-free processes more as just marketing language. In light of recent events, a detailed page is not sufficient.

[RMJ]

I’m beginning to think that gluten free certification is mainly marketing also. From what I can find online it is difficult to know how much testing is done.

[Scott Adams]

I have emailed Cynthia Kelly, the CEO of the GIG and GFCO, to ask questions about where in their step down process the companies are which recently tested positive for gluten, and she confirmed that she could not reveal this information due to their NDA.

To me, the real issue here is that everything seems to be done behind the scenes--the companies can do all of the actual certification testing themselves, and not have to disclose any of it, or they can contract with a lab to do their testing, but that lab would only have to report their results to the company that contracted with them. There is no 3rd party testing required, and all testing is done internally by the companies. All results are subject to the GFCO's NDA and are not made public.

[GardeningForHealth]

Ok so this is starting to look like we have uncovered something important here; it appears that the gluten testing done by food manufacturers--if any--is done behind the scenes and is done under Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) which prevent the food manufacturer's test results from being shared publicly.

How did that happen? That is not acceptable. Why is data such as testing for e.coli, salmonella, yeast and molds, and heavy metals found in a COA (Certificate of Analysis) shared by some companies and not bound by NDAs, but gluten testing is bound by NDAs? Why the disparate treatment between these two sets of data?

And regardless of the reason, that is not acceptable.