Natasha's Law and allergen rules for small food businesses
Since October 2021, any food packed on your premises before a customer orders it — a wrapped sandwich in the chiller, a boxed salad, a bagged brownie — must carry a full ingredient label with allergens emphasised. Here is what Natasha's Law requires, what still applies to made-to-order food, and how small teams keep allergen information right every day.
What counts as PPDS food
Natasha's Law covers prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food: anything packed on the same premises it is sold from, before the customer chooses it. If you wrap sandwiches in the morning for the lunch fridge, those are PPDS. Food packed after the customer orders it (a burger boxed at the till) is not PPDS — but you must still provide allergen information for it.
What a PPDS label must show
- The name of the food
- A full ingredients list, in descending order by weight
- The 14 regulated allergens emphasised within that list (bold, italics or colour)
The 14 allergens you must declare
Celery, cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats), crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, peanuts, sesame, soybeans, sulphur dioxide and sulphites (above 10mg/kg), and tree nuts. These apply to all food you serve, not just PPDS — for made-to-order dishes you can give the information verbally or on a menu, but it must be accurate and staff must know where to find it.
Where small businesses get caught out
- Recipe drift. A supplier changes their pesto, and the label nobody re-checked now understates the allergens.
- "Ask staff" with no answer. A sign pointing at staff who have to guess is worse than no sign — keep a current allergen matrix everyone can reach.
- Cross-contact. A flapjack is not nut-free if it is cut on the baklava board. Officers ask about your controls, not just your labels.
- Specials and one-offs. The Saturday special needs the same allergen thinking as the permanent menu.
Making it stick day to day
Allergen management fails at the update step: the information was right when it was written and wrong by the time it mattered. Keep one source of truth — a single allergen matrix tied to your actual recipes and suppliers — and make updating it part of the routine when ingredients change, not an annual event. Allergen controls are also part of the management score officers assess at inspection; see our EHO inspection checklist and hygiene rating guide.
Put this into practice with Localyn
Localyn gives cafes, restaurants and takeaways a digital SFBB diary, temperature and cleaning records, allergen management and inspection-ready reports — all in one place.