US debuts actual gluten-free standard
 

22 parts per million

Such a number, by standing alone, by itself is hard to evaluate.
But it seems to have been set by technology...

A similar thing happened years ago with respect to lead in paint.
The health advocate community wanted lead levels to be set at zero,
based on the concept that "no level of lead is safe" for children.

But EPA made a similar sort of decision and set the level based on "detectable",
and and based on the amount of lead found in natural products (e.g., latex).

The loophole here is that some manufacturers actually produce using a gluten-free process, while others deliberately use gluten and then try to process it out afterwards--this is common in products where malt (barley) is used. Yes, you can process down to less than 20 ppm, earn your little stamp, but what happens on the day there is a new employee, or the machines are in need of servicing? Mistakes can't happen if you just adhere to safe ingredients in the first place, but now companies don't necessarily have to do that. Not that they had to before, either, since prior to this it was completely unregulated. But many major manufacturers were reluctant to jump in without knowing what they could or couldn't get away with, so up until now, most if not all products were using zero gluten ingredients by default. I predict you will see an explosion of post-processed-GF products now, and an associated explosion of accidents and recalls.

So now what we really need are two different labels, gluten free process and gluten free with consumer education. This reminds me of when those hippie farmers fought to get organic labels from the government only to lose control of the word.

Well, at least we don't have to deal with ambiguous "G " labels.

"GF " now means "Gluten Free"
while the non-existant "GM"
retains the meaning "Genetically Modified"

Maybe Monsanto will eventually come up with barley that is GMGF.