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There was an excellent talk at the Baltimore meeting by Felicia Satchell,
Consumer Safety Officer, FDA on their food labelling policy with special
emphasis on gluten. If tapes of those sessions become available, that one
would be well worth it.

In any case to test my delicate understanding of it I went to the local
library and looked at several "standards of identity". Such a standard
specifies required and optional ingredients and sometimes minimum and
maximum amounts of some of them in some commonly used foods. Also specified
in general terms is the manufacturing process: caution, the term being
defined must be repeated exactly on the label or the standard doesn't
apply. Example there is a standard for fruit butters, such as "apple
butter", but not for "apple spread".

"Cheddar cheese" has such a standard - from the Federal Code of
Regulations, Title 21, section 133.133. It  includes one or more "optional
ingredients" allowed as "safe and suitable ingredients". One of these is
"enzymes of animal, plant, or microbial origin used in curing or flavor
development". (The context of this description suggests this refers to
ingredients added late in the manufacturing process to fine tune the
curing, not to any starting materials.)  Following this is an exception
given for cheddar cheese labels only that if any such are used the single
ingredient term "enzymes" can be used on the label!

Well, that label term is used often. Has anyone noticed gluten-like
reactions, not lactose like,  from a cheddar cheese?  Traditional lists of
allowed foods for celiacs alway list "hard" cheeses such as cheddar, but
warn about the soft cheeses whose extra processing apparently can let
gluten in.

I suspect "cheddar cheese" is gluten free, but thought details of how the
potential gluten source arose could be useful for other foods.

                          Kemp Randolph
                          Long Island
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