Food Allergen Awareness Training — The 14 Allergens, Natasha's Law and Who Needs Training

Fourteen allergens must be declared under assimilated Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011: cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10mg/kg, lupin and molluscs. Every food business must be able to give accurate information about these fourteen for everything it sells — and the duty is absolute. "I'm not sure" is not a lawful answer to an allergen question, and neither is a blanket disclaimer that the kitchen cannot guarantee anything.

How that information must be given depends on the format. For non-prepacked food — anything made to order, served at a counter or plated in a restaurant — the information can be given in writing on a menu or board, or signposted to a member of staff who will provide it verbally. That signposting route is what makes staff training a legal necessity rather than a nicety: if your menu says "ask a member of staff", the law assumes that member of staff knows the answer.

For food prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) the rules are stricter. Natasha's Law — the Food Information (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2019 and its equivalents across the UK — came into force on 1 October 2021 and requires PPDS food to carry a full ingredients list on the pack with the fourteen allergens emphasised, usually in bold. PPDS means food packed on the same premises from which it is sold, before the customer orders it: the sandwiches in your chiller, the pre-boxed salads, the wrapped cakes on the counter. Food packed to order in front of the customer is not PPDS, which is why two visually identical sandwiches in the same shop can have different labelling duties.

Cross-contact is the operational half of the problem, and it is where training changes behaviour rather than paperwork. Allergens transfer through shared fryers, shared utensils, flour dust, cleaning cloths, splashes and hands — routes that do not exist for the bacterial hazards food hygiene training focuses on. Cooking does not destroy allergens the way it destroys pathogens, so the controls are entirely different: separation, sequencing, dedicated equipment and cleaning between tasks.

In practice the whole team needs allergen awareness, but for different reasons. Front-of-house and counter staff take the questions and are the people the law's signposting route depends on. Kitchen staff control cross-contact during prep and service. Whoever writes the menu or labels the PPDS packs carries the documentation duty. Allergen training does not replace Level 2 Food Hygiene — the two cover different hazards — and an environmental health officer will look for both.