October 1st 2021 saw new allergen regulations come into force. Natasha's Law has been established to ensure that any allergens on food that is packaged for direct sale is labelled correctly with any allergens easily identifiable.

What does this mean to your business - if you sell food that is packaged on the premises and sold on or off the premises then it must all be labelled with the name of the food, full ingredients listed and any allergenic ingredients emphasized. Best practice is to highlight the allergens in bold and capital letters.

My advise is that is you are not sure if your products should be labelled with allergens, label them as its better to be safe than sorry. Just a small drop of ground nut oil could be enough to cause death. Remember that the food a customer purchases from you might not necessarily be eaten by them, they could be buying for another person and that person could be allergic to something.

The 14 allergens that are considered hazardous to health and need to be highlighted are:

• Fish (remember about fish based sauces too like Worcestershire)
• Shellfish
• Eggs
• Milk
• Peanuts (ground nut oil)
• Tree nuts (almonds etc.)
• Lupin
• Sesame
• Mustard
• Celery
• Gluten
• Soya
• Molluscs
• Sulphur Dioxide

More information can be found at the Food Standards Agency (FSA) website - www.gov.uk