Celiac Sprue Association Needs Your Help In North Carolina

This is for CSA members and friends living in North Carolina. You can help all celiacs! Contact your Senator! Your US Senator Richard Burr has yet to support adding barley, rye and common oats as hazards in a “Managers Amendment” to S. 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act. Allergen designation will only cover WHEAT. This bill is expected to come out of committee for a Senate vote very, very soon. PLEASE contact your Senator on the Health Committee. Urge YOUR Senator to agree to include the food hazards for those with Celiac Disease. It is your turn, we have done what we can on the national level.

Add WORDS TO THE LIST on page 129, line 9 of S. 510 - - -
Hazard Analysis – (A) “gluten as related to celiac disease.” This simple revision would mean food companies would be required to have information from ingredient suppliers on to presence of wheat AND also gluten sources of barley, rye, common oats AND risk of cross contact potential. Knowledge is the lifeblood of the lifelong management of celiac disease.

Please take the time NOW – THIS WEEK to contact your Senator and tell him how much this can help YOU and your family. Email or Fax your letter. Here is the link to the text of the bill posted on the CSA website. S510 Bill.

Webpage of Senator Richard Burr – United States Senator for North Carolina
To phone Senator Burr’s Washington Office: (202) 224-3154 His staff will carry your message.

SAMPLE LETTER BELOW
Scroll down copy and paste and personalize. Please share this with a friend. For more information call the CSA Office for Executive Director Mary Schluckebier. Thank YOU!

[Date]

The Honorable Senator Richard Burr, North Carolina
217 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510

REF: S. 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act

Dear Senator Burr,

As your constituent, I am seeking your leadership and support for an amendment to S.510, the FDA Food Safety Management Act to include the hazards affecting the food choices of those with celiac disease.
S. 510, page 129, line 9 Hazard Analysis – (Add the words, such as)
“gluten as related to celiac disease.”

Celiac disease, is an autoimmune disease, thus excluded from the food allergy aspects of the bill. A Manager’s Amendment would recognize this hazard and protect the 1% of the population coping with this autoimmune disease. My family lives with celiac disease. The only treatment for celiac disease is a strict gluten-free diet.

It is not always possible to determine the RISK of a food being free of wheat, barley, rye, common oats, their crosses and their derivatives either directly as an ingredient or through cross contact. Such information is rarely available. The lack of documentation creates a health hazard for those requiring gluten–free foods and an unclear liability for food companies.

Please include our food hazard in this bill. At this time:
*No safe gluten threshold has been established for those with celiac disease.
*The FDA regulation for volunteer gluten-free food labeling is pending.
*The gluten–free segment of the food industry grew 74% between 2004 and 2009 and is projected to continue growing at a rate of 15–25% per year, according to the Nielson Company.

Thank you in advance for your leadership.
Sincerely,[Your Name]

General Mills Feedback

I wrote earlier in the week about the CSA's request to send feedback to General Mills this week. I hope you took the time to send them a message. Below is the message I sent and their response.

Thank you for contacting General Mills regarding our gluten free products. We appreciate the time you have taken to share your positive feedback with us and we are glad to hear how much you are enjoying our products. We will be very happy to pass on your comments to the product team.

The following products will be in national distribution beginning June 1st:
- BC Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix
- BC Gluten Free Devil’s Food Cake Mix
- BC Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Brownies
- BC Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix
- Corn Chex cereal
- Strawberry Chex cereal
- Honey Nut Chex cereal
- Chocolate Chex cereal
- Cinnamon Chex cereal

Since the above Chex Cereals have been reformulated it is possible that both varieties will be on store shelves. Therefore, make sure the box states "Gluten Free". We offer other products that are not labeled gluten free and do not contain gluten. Always examine our ingredient listing and the product will be gluten free if the ingredient label does not list wheat, oats, barley, rye or derivatives of these grains; like malt, organic malt, semolina, durham, tritcale and spelt. We never hide gluten under other ingredients; like Natural Flavors or Spices. We are committed to creating the highest quality products for our consumers. We appreciate your loyalty and hope you continue to enjoy our products

Sincerely,
Leah Giovanni
Consumer Services

Original Message From: glutenfreeraleigh@gmail.com
I'd like to say a huge thank you to General Mills on behalf of the Celiac Sprue Association (CSA) and all Celiacs in the USA for making gluten free cereals and other options (betty crocker mixes) available to us! It is extremely difficult to find safe,good tasting and moderately priced gluten free products and you have done a wonderful service to our community. Again, my most sincere thanks and keep up the good work. Please consider making/labeling more of your products GF.
-Zach
Gluten Free Raleigh Blog
http://glutenfreeraleigh.blogspot.com/

The Celiac Sprue Association (CSA) Needs Your Help!

I received the following email from Rebekah Godfrey who is the Member-at-large for Celiac Sprue Association Region 4. As you may already know, the only Celiac Disease support group in the Triangle is sponsored by CSA and we happen to be in Region 4.

Please take a few minutes to help out the CSA and send positive feedback on their behalf to General Mills for expanding their Gluten Free options (see Chex post here and Betty Crocker post here). They are targeting this week (April 13 - April 17) to send a concentrated message to General Mills from the Celiac community.

Greetings, CSA Region 4 Members!

My name is Rebekah Godfrey and I'm the Region 4 Member-at-large.

I want to tell you about an exciting initiative that our region gets to pilot.

We all know that General Mills Rice Chex are gluten free. This is in part to CSA's 20 year partnership with them. General Mills is very interested in making many more GF cereals (as well as other products); it's just a matter of time until they do. The process can be expedited by our positive calls, emails and letters.

This is where we come in. We are going to mobilize all Region 4 groups to call/email/write General Mills during the week of April 13-17 to tell them how much we appreciate Rice Chex and how we are looking forward to more GF cereals. Staying positive with our messages and mentioning CSA will make the biggest impact.

Phone number: 800-328-1144 (7:30AM-5:30PM CT)
Address: General Mills, Box 200, Mpls, MN 55440
Web site

Thank you for making this work -- the more people who make contact with General Mills, the more that will get accomplished.

Thanks again!
Rebekah

Click here to send online feedback.

Useful Resources: CSA's Good Search

The Celiac Sprue Association (CSA) has a new search engine to assist in fund raising for their organization. Most of us do some type of Internet searching on a pretty regular basis. The CSA Good Search is a way to do our normal searching (built on Yahoo search engine technology) and to raise funds for the CSA at the same time.

The search engine GoodSearch donates 50-percent of its revenue to the organizations designated by its users. It’s a simple and compelling concept. You use GoodSearch exactly as you would any other search engine. Because it is powered by Yahoo!, GoodSearch has proven results. The money GoodSearch donates to the causes comes from advertisers—the users and the organizations do not spend a dime.

The Celiac Sprue Association (CSA) is registered with GoodSearch and estimates that each Web search will generate approximately $.01. Over a year’s time, with 1000 supporters averaging two searches a day, the estimated annual revenue to CSA would be $7,300 a year. That would be enough funds to cover the printing costs of our CSA New Patient packets! Visit www.goodsearch.com for more information and designate CSA to be your GoodSearch charity.

Click here to use the CSA Good Search.