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Hello,
I spoke with Anna Marie Brown with the FDA Office of Food Labeling,
Regulatory Branch and she claims the regulations exist to require source
labeling and also to label known allergens.  She said a letter was sent to
manufacturers in January 1993 which required source labelling.  She also
said a letter was sent to manufacturers June 10, 1996 which advised them to
include known allergens in the labels.  She also suggested I talk to
manufacturers if I feel the labels were not complete.  I thought that was a
little odd - aren't they supposed to regulate the labels?  I had asked her
3 times to fax me a copy of the letters, but she still has not done that.
She said I could also call Falicia Sachell with the FDA to discuss this.
I'm not sure it is appropriate to give out the phone number this way, so
I'll do so by individual replies.  It would be nice if someone in the 202
area code would call the FDA for the info.  It is long distance charged to
my calling card from work for me and I'm getting nowhere.
I did a search of the archives (it's very easy and very helpful), and found
a great post from the FDA that answers a lot of questions we have about
labels.  It is item #3083 (31Aug1995) titled FDA-Food Labeling Policy file.
 It is very, very long, but very thorough.  It was written before the
letter on listing allergens, and I could not find a post discussing that.
In summary, it seems we should all learn what are the existing regulations,
and keep them in mind when checking labels.  We could then determine where
exactly the regulations fall short for us.
Please give me feedback on this and I'll summarize.
Kelly in CA.