Gluten Labeling In Other Countries/cultures

[Fey]

I've been in the US for 9 years now, but I grew up in Brazil. Remembering a lot of Brazilian food is naturally gluten free (including omg COOKIES!), yesterday I went to the International Food Store to get some items.

Then I noticed that EVERY PACKAGE was labeled with "CONTAINS GLUTEN/DOES NOT CONTAIN GLUTEN" and I almost cried at the store. It was so great to be able to do some grocery shopping without reading through 400 ingredients, and having to look up half of them online via my phone.

Then I found out that the Celiac Association there got a federal law introduced that all products containing gluten should be labeled properly - back in 1992! And that a revision was passed in 2003 with every product having to present its "gluten" status, containing or not.

Is anyone aware of similar measures being presented to Congress/FDA? Wheat allergy status just isn't enough

[WheatChef]

I think it was either 2 or 4 years ago that the FDA was legally obligated to create an official gluten labeling system... They finally got around to putting together a commission on it last year, and did a consumer survey about it back in march or april of this year... Who knows when they will finally get around to putting out the labels. The bright side is that when they were first talking about these labels it was clear from their statements that they had no clue about what all was involved in it. With the type of questions they were asking in the surveys it seemed like they have a much better hold on the concept. Unfortunately one of the planned measures is to force anyone using the term "gluten-free" on single ingredient items that aren't wheat/barley/rye like soy flour will have to additionally say "all soy products are naturally gluten free" even when a recent study showed a brand of soy flour to contain over 2k ppm of gluten and even showed whole grain millet (another that would have to be listed as being naturally gluten free) to have enough gluten in it to cause a reaction.