What the law expects from a packaged food label

If you sell packaged food in the UK — whether you're a baker working from a converted garage or a small producer supplying farm shops and delis — your label has to do a lot of heavy lifting. The fourteen major allergens must be declared whenever they appear in your product, and they must be easy to spot. For food prepacked for direct sale, the rules tightened in October 2021: anything you wrap and hand to a customer, from a sandwich to a slice of cake to a deli pot, now needs a full ingredients list with the allergens highlighted. This isn't box-ticking for its own sake. For someone living with a milk or peanut allergy, your label is the difference between a safe meal and a serious reaction.

The fourteen allergens you must always flag

These are the ingredients that must be named and emphasised on every relevant label:

• Celery (including celeriac and celery salt)
• Cereals containing gluten — wheat (including spelt and khorasan), rye, barley and oats
• Crustaceans, such as prawns, crab and lobster
• Eggs
• Fish
• Lupin — often found in gluten-free flour blends
• Milk
• Molluscs, such as mussels, squid and oysters
• Mustard
• Nuts — almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios and macadamia nuts
• Peanuts
• Sesame
• Soya
• Sulphur dioxide and sulphites, where they exceed 10 mg per kilogram or 10 mg per litre

Note that peanuts and tree nuts are separate allergens, and that lupin and sesame catch out plenty of small producers — particularly in baked goods and dressings.

How to emphasise allergens in the ingredients list

The allergen must appear within the ingredients list itself, not only in a separate "allergy advice" box. You can emphasise it using bold, capitals, italics, underlining or a contrasting colour. Bold is the most common choice and the easiest to keep consistent.

Whatever method you pick, apply it to every allergen every time, and add a short line such as "For allergens, see ingredients in bold" so the reader knows where to look. Name the allergen clearly rather than hiding it behind a derivative: "butter (milk)", "whey powder (milk)", "flour (wheat)". Ingredients should be listed in descending order by weight, with allergens still emphasised wherever they fall.

Making the emphasis survive the printing process

A bold allergen on a screen proof can all but disappear on a finished label. Thin typefaces, pale ink colours and small packs all work against you. Before you sign off artwork, check a printed proof rather than a PDF — what you see on a monitor is not what comes off the press.

• Use a heavier weight of the same typeface rather than a squeezed or faux-bold setting
• Pair bold with capitals where space allows, so the emphasis doesn't rely on colour alone
• Keep the ingredients panel clear of barcodes, QR codes, seams, folds and curvature
• Check the smallest text still meets minimum legibility requirements — mandatory particulars generally need an x-height of at least 1.2 mm on larger labels
• Confirm the ingredients panel isn't running across a gloss laminate or a dark background where contrast is lost

Cross-contamination claims: mean what you say

Statements such as "may contain" or "made in a factory that also handles nuts" are voluntary, but once printed they must be accurate. Vague, blanket warnings don't protect you, and they quietly erode trust with the customers who rely on your labels most.

Name the specific allergen: "may contain traces of sesame" tells a shopper far more than "may contain allergens". Only make the claim where a real risk exists, and only where you cannot remove that risk through cleaning, segregation or scheduling. If you can control the risk, control it — a well-run kitchen beats a caveat every time. Never use a cross-contamination warning as a substitute for good allergen management, and never assume a warning covers an ingredient you forgot to declare.

Free-from claims, vegan labels and version control

"Free-from" is a strong claim with a strict meaning. A gluten-free product must contain no more than 20 parts per million of gluten, and it must not be at risk of cross-contamination from gluten-containing ingredients. If you can't demonstrate that with records and, where needed, testing, use a softer description instead.

Watch the traps: vegan does not mean dairy-free or egg-free, and "dairy-free" is not a legally defined term in the same way as "milk-free". A recipe swap during a supply shortage can quietly introduce an allergen, so treat every ingredient change as a labelling change. Keep supplier specifications, batch records and cleaning logs for the shelf life of the product and a reasonable period beyond.

Finally, build version control into your artwork. One master file per recipe, a clear date and version number, and a signed-off printed proof before each reprint. If old packaging is still in the storeroom when a recipe changes, reprint rather than over-sticker — a sticker that peels, or lands on the wrong pack, is a risk nobody needs.