Allergen guidance
The FSA has refreshed its best-practice guidance on precautionary allergen labelling. Here's what actually changed — and the practical steps for your kitchen.
If you run a café, restaurant or catering business, allergen information is one of the areas an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) will look at closely — and one customers increasingly ask about by name. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has updated its best-practice guidance on precautionary allergen labelling (PAL) — the "may contain" style warnings — to make them clearer and more useful.
This is guidance, not a brand-new law, but it sets the standard an EHO and a well-run kitchen will expect. Here's what changed and what to do about it.
The headline shift is about when a "may contain" warning belongs on food, and how specific it should be. A precautionary allergen label should only be used where there is a genuine, unavoidable risk of cross-contamination that you cannot remove through separation and cleaning. It is not a catch-all disclaimer to add "just in case".
Where a PAL is justified, it should name the specific allergen. "May contain peanuts" tells an allergic customer something they can act on; a vague "may contain nuts" does not. The guidance also confirms that a 'vegan' label and a 'may contain milk' warning can sit together — the vegan claim describes the recipe, while the PAL is food safety information about possible cross-contamination.
Turn the guidance into a short checklist:
The guidance also tidies up gluten wording. Avoid "No Gluten Containing Ingredients" statements. Where you make a claim, use only the legally defined phrases "gluten free" or "low gluten" — these have specific thresholds behind them, so they mean something consistent to a coeliac customer. If you can't stand behind the threshold, don't make the claim.
Getting allergen information right is a legal duty under UK food law: businesses must provide accurate allergen information for the food they sell, and Natasha's Law requires full ingredient and allergen labelling on food prepacked for direct sale. The FSA's PAL guidance sits on top of that as best practice for the "may contain" warnings the law doesn't prescribe word-for-word.
An EHO will expect to see that your allergen information is accurate, that staff know how to answer an allergen question, and that your decisions are recorded. Precautionary labels are part of that picture, not a substitute for it.
One honest note: reading this article, or displaying a poster, does not by itself make you compliant. Compliance comes from correctly identifying the allergens in your dishes, giving customers accurate information, trained staff and a documented system. Always check the current FSA guidance and your local authority's requirements.
Guidance is easier to apply when your team understands the why behind it. Our Level 2 Allergy Awareness course is EHO-approved, accredited by Qualifi and CPD UK, and online with an instant certificate.
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Start Allergy Awareness training →The FSA updated its allergen 'may contain' labelling guidance — here's what changed and what our kitchen needs to do: https://www.thesaferfoodgroup.com/fsa-allergen-labelling-update.php
About the author
Food Safety Trainer, Educator & Consultant
Paul is a food safety trainer, educator and consultant with over 15 years' experience helping food businesses work safely. He lectures at university level and spent decades across the hospitality and retail sectors, giving him a practical, floor-level understanding of the pressures real kitchens face. Much of his consultancy work centres on food safety auditing and management system design.
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