The 14 Allergens UK Food Producers Must Declare (and How to Label Them)

Allergen labelling is not optional

UK food law requires food businesses to declare 14 specific allergens whenever they appear in a product. This applies to every food producer — a commercial kitchen making ready meals, and a home baker selling brownies on Etsy. The scale of the operation doesn't change the obligation.

The requirement comes from the Food Information Regulations 2014, which retain in UK law the requirements that were formerly set out in EU Regulation 1169/2011. For small producers, the allergen rules are the single most important labelling obligation — allergen incidents cause the most serious enforcement actions, and the consequences for affected customers can be life-threatening.

This guide explains the 14 allergens, how they must appear on your label, and what the rules look like in practice for an artisan food producer.

The 14 allergens UK law requires you to declare

Under the Food Standards Agency's allergen guidance, the 14 allergens that must be declared whenever present in a food product are:

Celery — including celeriac, celery seeds, and celery salt
Cereals containing gluten — wheat (including spelt and Khorasan wheat), rye, barley, oats, and products derived from them
Crustaceans — prawns, crab, lobster, langoustine, crayfish
Eggs — and products made from eggs
Fish — and products made from fish (but not fish gelatine used as a carrier for vitamins or carotenoids)
Lupin — including lupin flour and lupin seeds, which can be found in some breads, pastries, and pasta
Milk — including lactose, casein, and products made from milk
Molluscs — mussels, oysters, squid, clams, scallops, whelks
Mustard — including mustard seeds, leaves, oil, flour, and prepared mustard
Peanuts — also known as groundnuts (distinct from tree nuts in terms of labelling)
Sesame — including sesame seeds, sesame oil, and tahini
Soybeans — soya, tofu, miso, tempeh, and products derived from soybeans
Sulphur dioxide and sulphites — when present at concentrations of more than 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/litre (expressed as SO₂)
Tree nuts — almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecan nuts, Brazil nuts, pistachio nuts, macadamia nuts, and Queensland nuts

These 14 are set by law. You cannot substitute or shorten the list — each must be declared by its specific name whenever it or a product derived from it is present as an ingredient.

How allergens must appear on your label

For pre-packed food (food you package before putting it on sale), allergens must be:

Listed in the ingredients list — every time an allergen appears in the ingredients, it must be highlighted. The standard method is bold text, though underlining, italics, or contrasting colour are also acceptable. The key requirement is that the emphasised allergen stands out from surrounding ingredient text.

Example:

Ingredients: wheat flour, butter (milk), caster sugar, dark chocolate (cocoa mass, sugar, soya lecithin, vanilla), egg, sea salt

Note that milk appears twice here (butter and milk in the butter declaration) — it must be emphasised every time it appears.

Declared even in trace/cross-contact situations — but with a distinction. The 14 allergens are mandatory only when they are present as an ingredient. If an allergen is present due to cross-contamination during manufacture (the same equipment processes a peanut product, for example) but is not an intentional ingredient, a "may contain" warning is not legally required — but it is good practice and widely expected by allergy-aware consumers. The legal declaration covers intentional use; the "may contain" advisory covers cross-contact risk. Both matter to your customers, but only one is required by law.

Allergen declarations without a full ingredients list are not compliant. Some small producers add "Contains: milk, wheat, eggs" without a full ingredients list. This does not satisfy the FIR 2014 requirements — you need the full list with allergens highlighted within it.

The PPDS rules: different obligations for market stall food

Pre-packed for direct sale (PPDS) is food packed on the same premises where it's being sold — the granola you bag up before taking to a farmer's market, the brownies you wrap and label at the stall. Under changes that came into force on 1 October 2021 (Natasha's Law), PPDS food must now carry a full ingredients list with the 14 allergens emphasised within it — the same standard as pre-packed food sold in shops.

Before October 2021, PPDS food only had to display the allergens (typically via a "contains" label). The 2021 change removed that lighter-touch option. If you wrap and label food on the premises where you sell it, you now need full ingredient declarations, not just allergen summaries.

A detailed guide on Natasha's Law and PPDS labelling requirements is available on the site, covering what changed in October 2021, which products are PPDS, and what a compliant PPDS label must include.

Distance selling: your Etsy listing is a label

If you sell food online — through Etsy, Shopify, a website, or any distance channel — allergen information must be available to the customer before they complete their purchase. You cannot rely on the physical label to communicate allergens when the customer can't see the product before ordering.

The UK food labelling guidance is clear: all mandatory information (except the durability date) must be available free of charge before purchase completion. In practice: include the full ingredients list with allergens emphasised in your Etsy or Shopify product description. A link to a separate page is insufficient — the information must be visible without clicking away.

Why this matters for artisan producers specifically

Large food manufacturers have dedicated food safety teams and pre-shipment allergen audits. As a small producer, you're the person checking ingredients, writing the label, and posting the order. The stakes are the same.

Allergen incidents cause the most severe outcomes in food safety enforcement — not because regulators are particularly aggressive, but because allergic reactions to undeclared allergens can be fatal. The 2018 inquest into Natasha Ednan-Laperouse's death (which led to the 2021 labelling changes) was a direct result of sesame in bread not being declared on the label. At the artisan level, the same failures happen — an oat in a "gluten-free" bar that isn't actually gluten-free, or milk in a dark chocolate that a customer assumes is dairy-free.

For practical allergen management:

Tag every ingredient when you buy it, not when you write a label. Note which of the 14 it contains.
Track allergens through your recipes — if an ingredient carries an allergen, every recipe using that ingredient carries the same allergen.
Note cross-contact risks — if you use shared equipment between peanut-containing and peanut-free recipes, that cross-contact risk should appear on the label as an advisory.
Store your allergen records — batch-level records showing which ingredients (and their allergen status) went into each production run are what an environmental health inspection will look for.

The batch tracking guide for small UK food producers covers how to build ingredient and allergen records into your production process from the start.

Practical label example

For a batch of oat and honey bars containing wheat, oats, honey, butter, and sunflower seeds:

Ingredients: oats (29%), honey (26%), wheat flour (22%), unsalted butter (milk) (14%), sunflower seeds (9%), sea salt

Allergens: Contains gluten (wheat, oats), milk. May contain tree nuts and peanuts (produced in a facility that handles nuts).

The allergens in the ingredient list are bolded. The "may contain" advisory is separate and covers cross-contact risk. Both are present on the label; only the ingredient-list declaration is legally required.

This guide covers UK allergen labelling requirements under the Food Information Regulations 2014. It is general information for small food producers, not legal advice. For product-specific allergen questions — particularly around cross-contact risk, QUID declarations, or PPDS classification — contact your local Environmental Health team or a food safety consultant.