Allergen identification table

When you prepare and serve unpackaged food products, it’s now necessary to provide allergy information. Use our table to identify what’s in your products.

Legal obligation

On 13 December 2014 the EU Food Information for Consumers Regulation 1169/2011 came into force. This is enforced in the UK by the Food Information Regulations 2014 (FIR), which came into effect in August 2014.

Note. Until 13 December 2014 the FIR applied to prepacked foods. This has now been extended to food sold unpackaged, e.g. products sold in catering outlets, deli counters and bakeries.

What must you do?

If you prepare and sell food products, the FIR require you to provide allergy information about the ingredients in the food made or served to your customers. This is where our new Allergen Identification Table can be used.

Details

The EU law lists 14 allergens that need to be identified. To make it easy to identify which ones are in your products, we have listed these in columns. The allergens are:

(1) “Cereals containing gluten”; (2) “Celery”; (3) “Eggs”; (4) “Fish”; (5) “Crustaceans and molluscs”;(6) “Milk”; (7) “Mustard”; (8) “Peanuts”; (9) “Other nuts”; (10) “Sesame seeds”; (11) “Soya”; (12) “Sulphur dioxide and sulphites”; (13) “Lupin seeds” ; and, (14) “Flour”.

Simply tick the box to identify which allergens are in your products. You should complete this process for every item you sell.

Make it available

We suggest that you laminate the completed table and give a copy to staff who serve the products. In addition, you must train them so that they are aware of this legislation and of your duties to inform customers about allergens.