Gluten Free Ppm?

[Modism]

Okay, so I wanted to delete this post since I found my answer but I don't know how....

So, does "gluten free" mean the same thing in Canada and the USA?

My mother said that it's 20ppm, but I have found conflicting sources.

All my gluten free purchases state: made in a gluten free facility. Does this mean they are 100% gluten free? What about cross contamination at the source of the flours?

[MySuicidalTurtle]

Instead of deleting this could you tell us what you found out?

[psawyer]

In Canada, by law, a product labelled as, or represented to be, "gluten free" can not contain wheat, rye, barley, oats, or any derivative part thereof, period. There is no maximum level, it simply can not be there at all, even if the proteins are processed out somehow, such as by distillation.

There is no legally regulated definition of the term in the USA, although FALCPA requires that one be developed and proposed by 2008.

In Europe, the rules are different, and a product which contains as much as 200 ppm can be labelled "gluten free" under at least some circumstances.

Anything made in a gluten free facility will not contain any intentional gluten at all, but cross contamination is still a very, very slight possibility--an ingredient could be contaminated prior to entering the facility.

[TCA]

Psawyer,

Just had to say that I LOVE your quote. My hubby and I are both engineers, as are 90% of our friends. We live in a NASA town, so there's a lot of us. I can sooooo relate to the quote. Thanks for the laugh!

Sorry, off topic!

[gfp]

The simple answer is that there is a international definition by the FAO/WHO in the codex alimentarius.

Open Original Shared Link

However one must remember that the FAO is an industry sponsored body and also that the document is pretty meaningless.

Additionally according to the charter:

The Codex Alimentarius Commission

The Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) is the main international body concerned with the setting of international food standards. The body was established in 1962 and is jointly funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) - currently 75% FAO, 25% WHO. The secretariat of the CAC is based at the headquarters of the FAO in Rome.

Membership is open to any country which is a member of the FAO or WHO and currently numbers 162. Other bodies can have observer status. Membership confers no obligations on countries but enables them to contribute to the development of standards and to have their point of view taken into account. Full details of the organisation’s statutes, rules, procedures and membership are contained in it’s Procedural Manual [1].

1.1 This standard applies to those processed foods which have been specially prepared to meet

the dietary needs of persons intolerant to gluten.

1.2 The standard refers only to the specific provisions related to the special dietary purpose for

which these foods are intended.

1.3 This standard does not apply to foods which in their normal form do not contain gluten.

Hence the definition does not include a corn tortilla for instance which should be naturally gluten-free. It would be in contravention to the code to label frozen peas as gluten free but if they make a corn tortilla and deliberatly add wheat gluten to the limit they can!

2.2.2 For the purpose of this standard, gluten-free means that the total nitrogen content of the

gluten-containing cereal grains used in the product does not exceed 0.05 g per 100 grammes of

these grains on a dry matter basis.

In other words the standard is not fixed so the limit of gluten is different for wheat and rye for instance and even different varieties of wheat since the "gluten-containing cereal grains" have different ratio's of gluten and other proteins but the standard does not take this into account.

In other words it is a completely empty statement. If a manufacturer wishes to discard the other wheat proteins such as glutamine which is NOT gluten then they can use 200 ppm pure gluten in their product and call it gluten free. If they take the whole grain in a common wheat with a 1:1 ratio of gluten to glutamine they can only have 100 ppm... although this itself depends how they define ppm dry matter. In simple terms it depends how the gluten is measured, most commonly in terms of mass hence the different molecular weights of gluten vs glutamine most then be used to 'normalise' the calculation.

3.1 A gluten-free food shall be based on or shall contain:

(a) gluten-containing cereals such as wheat, triticale, rye, barley or oats or their constituents, which have been rendered "gluten-free" according to Section 2.2.2; or

( ingredients which do not contain gluten in substitution for the ingredients containing

gluten which are normally used in food of that kind; or

© any mixture of two or more ingredients as in (a) and (.

Again, the corn tortilla cannot be gluten-free...unless they deliberatly add wheat flour or other gluten????

5.2 A food which naturally has no gluten may not be called "gluten-free"; however, a cereal or a

food product containing a cereal which naturally has no gluten, may be labelled to show that it is

naturally free of gluten and is suitable for use in gluten-free diet.