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Part two of vinegar summary - here are some of the responses:
[my comments are in brackets]

"If there is a possibility of some variability (in the gluten-content of the final distilled product), the sheer number of different sources for processed or distilled goods magnifies that variability."

And another wrote: If testing was done, "it would almost certainly have to be done on every manufacturer separately, if not by batch or lot produced because as I said earlier, the efficiency of the purification process depends on how many theoretical plates the distillation column has".

Another person talked about budweiser beer and how they say they have tested the beer but have been unable to detect any barley content, claiming the barley protein has been turned into amino acids during the brewing process, and the final product is GF. [This may be possible, I suppose, as ELISA tests are typically less senstive to the gluten found in barley, and perhaps some celiacs are less sensitive to it also.]

Another asked that I "please make it clear that only a tiny percentage of distilled vinegar is ever made from wheat (Tabasco vinegar is), and if it isn't made from wheat, there is absolutely no question whatsoever that it's GF. Distilled vinegar made from corn, which is a grain, is without question GF."

And, another said, "there once was an explanation of distillation on the Listserv and in it an engineer from a prestigious school explained  that the  distillation process is often shortened and everything is not distilled out. ( distilled out is probably not an accurate way of saying this but you get my point)" [I do not have a source for this  -- check the archives?]

And, "I believe that the immune system is designed to pick up things so minute that even the shadow of gluten would be detected. Gluten that was formerly there no doubt leaves a "fingerprint" detectable to a system that has been under fire from gluten in the past. Remember that one of the functions of an immune system is to "remember" previous assaults and deal with them accordingly.This is one reason that vaccines made from dead viruses are effective."

This is one of those controversial topics that seems to bring up mention of the infamous "gluten police". They were mentioned a couple of times.

And, in the name of big business:"Why do the manufactures need their distilled product to be 100 % clean ? surely their product wont taste bad if it has a little gluten in it - so why assume they are spending millions in order to tightly distill what doesn't need distilling to such an extent ? "

Janice.

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