<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

About a dozen people responded to my post, but none was aware of any
specific, on-going legislative or regulatory initiative.  Several, however,
suggested organizations who have been active in food labelling in the past
and might also be active in the future.

1)  The Celiac Disease Foundation (address on the net), along with the
National Digestive Diseases Group was involved in the most recent change in
food labelling laws, which gave us the new Nutrition Guide labels.

2)  NOMSG [sorry, I don't know what the acronym stands for] has a Truth in
Labelling Campaign (TLC). Their hotline is 800-232-8674, but that number just
reaches a volunteer. Better, I am told, to call Kathleen Schwartz at
505-982-9373 (day number).

3)  The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) publishes a monthly
newletter called Nutrition Action Health Letter.  This is the organization
responsible for bringing into light the high fat and salt content in movie
theatre popcorn, Chinese food, and pastries.  At least it no longer bothers
me that pastries are high in fat. :-)

4)  The APHA (American Public Health Assn) was also suggested as a
possibility, but without specific indications of what they might be up to.

I haven't contacted any of these organizations, but, if I learn anything of
interest, I'll post it of course.  In the meantime, I guess I'll be holding
on to my GF Shopping Guides and learning more about the diet. (I was
diagnosed only 3 months ago.)  And I'll continue to be grateful for the
people who spend countless hours putting the guides together.  Thank you,
Bill Elkus, for your patient efforts with Kraft!

I'll also be giving some further thought to what kind of change in food
labelling would be useful and practical.  Given the innumerable sources of
gluten contamination -- which include, for the most sensitive people,
processing equipment in addition to food ingredients -- I think it
impractical to _require_ manufacturers to label food as GF or non-GF.  This
would require an enormous, expensive, and involuntary change in food
manufacturing, not just labelling.  (But wouldn't it be great for us?!?)
 Requiring food manufacturers to make these changes for less than 0.05% of
the population -- who have other, though more labor-intensive, means to find
out the required information -- will be hard to sell.

Perhaps further disclosure of the sources of questionable ingredients might
be a workable improvement.  One subscriber had seen a candy wrapper advising
that the product might contain traces of peanuts and wondered if we might be
able to get such a warning on gluten containing products.  I'm uncertain,
however, whether the peanut warning was required or put there by the
company's lawyers to avoid liability.

Lucky for us, though, there are already a number of manufacturers who
voluntarily make gluten-free products to serve our market, loads of
health-conscious brands without undesireable additives, and even a large
number of conventional manufacturers who, by chance, make products we can
eat.  Current food labels at least alert us to the presence of questionable
ingredients and provide us a way to verify their safety with the
manufacturer.  Resources like this listserv and the GF shopping guides help
us pick our way through them.  As Stuart Smalley said in Stuart Saves His
Family (a very funny movie), "It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet
the whole world."