A Tuesday lunchtime. Somebody orders the chicken wrap and asks whether it has sesame in it. The chef who wrote the recipe is off. The person on the counter says she does not think so, because the bread does not look like it has seeds on it, and because there is a queue.
The bun is a brioche. The glaze contains sesame paste, because the supplier changed the specification in March and sent an email nobody read.
Fourteen allergens, and the list is the law rather than a guideline
The framework is retained Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers, enforced in England through the Food Information Regulations 2014 and their equivalents in the other nations. It names fourteen allergens, and the fourteen are not a matter of judgement.
Cereals containing gluten, meaning wheat, rye, barley, oats and their hybrids. Crustaceans. Eggs. Fish. Peanuts. Soybeans. Milk. Nuts, meaning almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios and macadamias. Celery. Mustard. Sesame. Sulphur dioxide and sulphites at concentrations above 10mg per kilogram or 10mg per litre. Lupin. Molluscs.
Note two things on that list that catch kitchens out. Peanuts and tree nuts are separate entries, because they are botanically unrelated and somebody allergic to one may be fine with the other. And sulphites are on there at a very low threshold, which brings in dried fruit, some wines and vinegars, and a surprising number of processed ingredients.
Coeliac disease is not an allergy, but gluten is on the list and the obligation is the same. Whether you can describe something as gluten free is governed separately by rules on that claim, and 20 parts per million is the threshold that matters there.
Natasha's Law changed what you have to write down
Until October 2021, food packed on the premises where it was sold could be sold without an ingredients label. A pre-made sandwich in a chiller cabinet, a wrap in a bag, a salad in a pot, all made in the back and put out front, required nothing on the packaging.
The Food Information (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2019 changed that with effect from 1 October 2021, with parallel regulations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The change is known as Natasha's Law, after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died in 2016 after eating a baguette containing sesame that carried no ingredients label because none was required.
The rule applies to prepacked for direct sale, usually written PPDS. That means food packaged on the same premises from which it is being sold, before it is ordered by the customer. The test is whether it was in its packaging before the customer asked for it. A sandwich made to order and wrapped in front of the customer is not PPDS. The same sandwich made at seven in the morning and put in the fridge is.
PPDS food must carry the name of the food and a full ingredients list, with the allergens emphasised within that list, typically in bold. Not an allergen box off to one side. Not a list of the fourteen with ticks. The allergens have to be emphasised inside the ingredients list itself, which means you need the ingredients list first, which means you need accurate recipes.
That is the real cost of the law, and it is not the labels. It is knowing exactly what is in everything, keeping it current when a supplier reformulates, and having a system that reprints the label when the recipe changes.
Loose food is where most kitchens actually live
Most restaurant food is not PPDS. Food served loose, made to order or served at a table is non-prepacked, and the obligation is different: allergen information must be available and the customer must be told, clearly and prominently, how to get it.
Verbal is permitted. What is not permitted is a member of staff guessing, which brings us back to the brioche. If you rely on verbal information you need a signpost telling customers to ask, and a source the staff member reads from rather than recalls. A folder at the till, a tablet, a matrix on the wall of the kitchen. The Food Standards Agency has recommended that businesses go further and provide written allergen information for non-prepacked food, supported by a conversation with the customer. That is guidance rather than law, and it is the direction enforcement is heading.
The conversation itself matters legally. If a customer tells you about an allergy and you serve them something containing it, you have a problem regardless of what was on a sign. Record the interaction. A note on the ticket saying which allergy was declared, and an acknowledgement from the kitchen, takes four seconds and is the only evidence you will have.
Cross contamination is not covered by a label
A perfect label does not help if the fryer that does the breaded fish also does the chips, or if the same tongs go from the bread to the salad, or if flour is in the air.
The controls are physical and procedural: separate preparation areas or separated times, separate colour-coded equipment, allergen ingredients stored below and away from others, cleaning between tasks with detergent rather than a wipe of a cloth, and a defined method for an allergen order that goes through the kitchen differently from everything else.
Precautionary labelling, the may contain form of words, is voluntary and it is not a shield. It has to be based on a genuine assessed risk of unintended presence. Putting may contain nuts on everything you sell because it is easier makes the label meaningless, removes choice from the people the law exists to protect, and will not impress an enforcement officer.
Where all this ends up matters. Enforcement sits with local authority environmental health and trading standards under the Food Safety Act 1990 and the food information regulations, and runs from an improvement notice through to prosecution and an unlimited fine. Where somebody dies, the charge is not a food labelling offence. Prosecutions for gross negligence manslaughter have been brought against restaurant operators following allergic deaths, and convictions have resulted in custodial sentences. That is the ceiling on this risk, and it is why this is not a topic to leave to whoever is on the counter at lunchtime.
Where this shows up in the game
Restaurants and takeaways are part of Business Baron's full game, and a café can be run in the free game without paying anything. Inspectors arrive on a risk rating, pulled forward by complaints, and ask for what you actually have rather than what you meant to do. A supplier change that saves four pence a portion is exactly the kind of decision that changes more than the price.