Natasha's Law explained: allergen labelling for small UK food businesses

Since 1 October 2021, food that's prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) in the UK has needed a full ingredients list with allergens emphasised. The rule is known as Natasha's Law, after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died after an allergic reaction to a baguette that had no allergen information on its packaging. If you wrap food before a customer chooses it, this applies to you.

This is a plain-English summary for small producers. For anything you're unsure about, check the Food Standards Agency's guidance or ask your local council's environmental health team, who are usually happy to help.

What counts as PPDS

Food is PPDS when it's packed before the customer orders it, on the same premises where it's sold (including a market stall or van you run). Examples:

• Flapjacks wrapped in the morning and sold from your counter.
• Sandwiches made and boxed before the lunch rush.
• Cookies bagged at home and sold on your own market stall.

It's not PPDS when:

• Food is packed after the customer orders it, or sold unwrapped (this is "non-prepacked" food: allergen information must still be available, but it can be given in person, with a sign telling customers to ask).
• You sell it through someone else, like a café or farm shop. Then it's fully prepacked food, which has stricter labelling rules including a name and address and a best before date.

What a PPDS label must show

• The name of the food.
• A full ingredients list, in descending order of weight.
• Any of the 14 allergens emphasised within that list.

The 14 allergens

Celery, cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley and oats), crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, tree nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios and macadamia nuts), peanuts, sesame, soya, and sulphur dioxide and sulphites (when above 10 mg per kg or litre).

How to emphasise allergens

The allergen has to stand out from the rest of the list. Bold, capitals, underlining or a contrasting colour all work. The FSA's examples emphasise just the allergen word, for example:

Ingredients: WHEAT flour (WHEAT flour, calcium carbonate, iron, niacin, thiamin), butter (MILK), sugar, free range EGGS, ground ALMONDS, baking powder.

Two rules people often miss:

• Name the cereal and the nut. "Gluten" or "nuts" on its own isn't enough. Say wheat, barley, almonds, hazelnuts.
• Name the allergen when the ingredient's name doesn't. Butter, cheese, cream and yoghurt clearly come from milk, so emphasising the word is enough. Something like pesto or praline needs the allergen spelled out: pesto (basil, oil, Parmesan (MILK), pine nuts), praline (sugar, HAZELNUTS).

Ingredients made of ingredients

If you use something bought in that has its own ingredients list, like chocolate, puff pastry or a stock cube, list its ingredients in brackets after its name. Copy them from the packet and emphasise the allergens the same way.

"May contain" warnings

A "may contain" statement is voluntary. Use it only when you've assessed a real, unavoidable risk of cross-contamination, for example nuts and nut-free bakes made on the same surfaces. Putting it on everything "just in case" limits what allergic customers can safely buy and doesn't replace good kitchen practice.

The mistakes small producers make most

• Changing a supplier or brand and not updating the label.
• Writing "nuts" or "gluten" instead of naming the specific one.
• Forgetting the ingredients of bought-in components.
• Labels that are too small or faint to read.
• Staff who can't answer allergen questions about unwrapped food.

Making it manageable

The safest approach is to record allergens once, on each ingredient, and build every label from that, so a change to an ingredient flows into every product that uses it. MakrPrep does this: tick the allergens on each ingredient, paste in what's on the packet, and it builds the ingredients list for each recipe with the allergen words in capitals, in weight order, including anything inside your own sub-recipes. You still need to check it before you print, but you're checking, not writing from scratch.

Selling in the US too? See our guide to US allergen labelling and the Big 9.