Lots of people in the U.S. don't know that butter is made from milk. I have met plenty of people who don't know that cheese is a dairy product. I have met plenty of people who think that mayonnaise is a dairy product... Very few people know that American caramel is a dairy product...

while avoiding this kind of bureaucratic nonsense.

This is not bureaucratic nonsense. Reporting ingredients has been table stakes for selling foodstuffs in the U.S. for several decades. A company that can't get something that basic right is also getting something else wrong. And that's the point of these seemingly bureaucratic rules: they're basically unit tests for the regulatory agencies to identify issues they require followup.