Have you ever heard of the Gluten Free Certification Organization (GFCO)? They are a not-for-profit, independent service which only approves food as being gluten free according to a “consistent, defined, science-based standard that is confirmed by field inspections.” For your reference, this means less than 10 ppm, a standard more stringent than that of the FDA.
Triumph Dining recently wrote a great article about GFCO’s gluten free certification program and included a warning which I wanted to pass along to our readers. According to Triumph Dining:
Unfortunately, the GFCO was developed in cooperation with the Food Services, Inc., itself a subsidiary of the Orthodox Union (the “OU”), the world’s largest and oldest kosher certification agency. OU kosher certifiers carry out the GF inspection for the GFCO. A few years ago the OU was embroiled in an enormous corruption scandal because the OU had certified as kosher—and by extension halal—certain products like gefilte fish which turned out to be in violation of kosher law. The GFCO prides itself on having voluntarily asked the FDA, USDA, and Health Canada to review its program, so maybe it’s the real deal. All you need to know? Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware…as always.
If you are interested in seeing what foods are currently certified as gluten free, you can check out their approved list of gluten free companies and products here.
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Dr. Osborne,
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Kyle,
I would like to provide a clarification to the statement by Triumph Dining. They state: “…GFCO was developed in cooperation with the Food Services, Inc., itself a subsidiary of the Orthodox Union (the “OU”)…” This statement is incorrect. GFCO was modeled after koshering and organic certification processes. A team of scientists, health and business professionals, consumers and manufacturers developed the standards and business model for GFCO. GIG is the sole owner of GFCO and all decisions are made for certification by GFCO. Not every company that has applied is certified. The FSI/OU provides contracted third-party auditing, as do other qualified auditors. Auditors do inspections and provide a report, but have no decision-making in the contract with the companies certified. We also require testing of equipment, raw materials and finished products in the manufacturing plants, and do random ‘point of sale’ testing.
We are more than happy to discuss our program and process with anyone interested.