<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> Those of you who are following a gluten and casein free diet may be interested in the views of Dr. Harold M. Farrell, Jr, a milk proteins expert at the USDA in Philadelphia. Don Kasarda was kind enough to introduce me to Dr. Farrell (thanks again, Don!). I asked Dr. Farrell whether whey products and butter products contained casein. Dr. Farrell said that although the initial separation of whey and casein when making cheese is fairly clean, during the cheese making process, kappa casein macro peptides are released into the whey. He said that these appear to be less trouble to allergic individuals than the alpha and beta caseins, but they all can cause problems. As for butter, he said that commercial butter is mostly solid, but contains significant amounts of casein in suspension within the butterfat. The clarification process used to make 'ghee' from butter should remove the casein, but traces will probably still remain. He speculates that the remaining casein in ghee will be so small as to not trigger any allergic response. An analogous 'argument' has been going on for months in this Celiac discussion group with respect to grain alcohols. Some claim that the distillation process insures that only trace amounts of gluten will remain in alcohol, but many parents say their children have strong reactions to flavorings with grain alcohol bases. Obviously each person has to make their own decisions. My son is highly allergic to casein, but shows no adverse response to ghee. We have not tried butter, but after speaking with Dr. Farrell, I plan to continue to avoid butter. Bill Elkus