Anyone Familiar with “Certified Gluten Free” Certification?

I think you are on the right track as far as contacting GFCO. I do know that other than being an allergen component, gluten is associated with celiac's disease, which destroys the intestines. It can be used in food processing applications where you would not necessarily list 'wheat', which is some of the reason for the extra precautions.

Depending on where you are shipping your products, be aware that Canada has allergen labeling regulations just going into effect that address gluten also.

We label many of our products “gluten free”. We don’t use ingredients containing wheat or gluten but now a private label customer is asking us to go through a “Certified Gluten Free” certification. I don’t understand why this is being treated differently than allergens but anything to please the customer…

Hi Wret,
I believe the motivation from your customer is that the gluten free standard in the USA is 20ppm. The Standard that GFCO certify to is 10ppm, and is an audited certification. This gives the customer assurance that an independant third party is validating your gluten free claims and not just relying on their supplier.
It also puts in place a test regime that monitors your ingredients for cross contamination which, once you start testing, may be found to contain levels of gluten cross contaimination( past experience). (Here in Australia the standard is 5ppm)
Cosmo

Through GFCP

Hi,

Our customer want our facility to go through GFCO. Our customer want our facility to be added on their contact. We do not hold contract with GFCO. We do not have gluten in facility. Can someone guide me before audit what I need to prep documents. Specially Hazard analysis and internal audit. 

Our facility holds GFCO certification, and we have our copacker facilities listed on our audit certificate as well. We are visited once per year for an internal audit (we still had our in-person audit even with the pandemic) and it's one of the easiest audits I have done if you are already a gluten-free facility. It was mostly a desk audit that looked at our HACCP plan, and they made sure we had things like an allergen program in place. They are really just checking that programs are in place. However, we are a meat manufacturing company, so we are relatively low risk for gluten contamination. The audit also included a very brief tour, since we do not have any gluten on site. None of our co-packers have ever had an issue with GFCO certification. I provide them the GFCO contact I have, and they schedule the audit themselves, and provide me the results afterwards.

 

GFCO also assigns risk levels to ingredients, and requires additional testing depending on other risk factors, as well as the history of your company. I would highly recommend working with them. They are usually quick to answer questions, and are more than willing to help you determine appropriate testing schedules. They provide newsletters as well, and partner with some other organizations that support those with Celiac disease, or gluten intolerance.

Hi Binab2019 - You might have more luck starting a new thread for this question.

 

Getting certified can be a great confidence booster for your customers, and the GFCO will be happy to help you understand what's involved and what it will cost. You can have a look at this thread for more details on what the audit and paperwork entail: https://www.ifsqn.co...-audit-before/