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> I would like those people who say they will never eat any product that
> states "manufactured in a facility that also processes wheat..." - Do you
> still eat out? Do you know where everything that passes your lips has come
> from? Who has touched it? Where and how it was grown? How it was 
> processed?

Two years ago I got a one-month assignment in St. Paul, Minnesota.  My 
apartment was near the Mississippi River and I'd go for runs along the river 
walk.  St. Paul is a major port.  There are grain silos and train and barge 
depots all along the waterfront.  I'd see trains and barges come by and 
enormous bins filled with grain open up and dump their loads into them. 
Then the trains and barges would pass on.

This experience gave me a thoroughly new perspective on how simple or 
difficult is to guarantee that I'm eating gluten-free.  I don't know whether 
the owners of those bins quarantine their wheat, or whether they'll fill a 
bin with wheat this month and corn next month and barley the month after 
that and rice the month after that.  Same for the barges and the train cars.

It made me understand that all my concerns about cross-contamination in the 
restaurant kitchen, or cross-contamination in the factory were much less 
relevant than I'd thought.  If the corn that came to the factory was 
cross-contaminated in the grain silo, before it even got to the factory, 
then what difference does it make if the factory is careful about 
cross-contamination?  If I'm deciding between the box that says "gluten 
free" and the box that says "gluten free ingredients manufactured in a plant 
the also processes wheat" do I know how thoroughly they washed the train car 
that brought the rice to those two plants?

This did not leave me disheartened.  I did not decide to eat nothing but 
apples and beef because of this.  It just highlighted for me that life 
contains risks.  I can do my best to remain on a strict GF diet.  But I have 
as much control over that as I do over not getting hit by a car on my way to 
the grocery store.

That's my 2 cents-wroth on this discussion.

Hope it helps,

Richard Paul 

*Please provide references to back up claims of a product being GF or not GF*
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