Allergen labelling for home food sellers: what Natasha's Law actually requires

Updated 11 September 2026

Most guides to Natasha’s Law tell home sellers they must put a full ingredients label on everything. That is not what the law says, and the detail they skip is the one that decides whether it applies to you at all.

This is a plain-English summary to help you ask the right questions, not legal advice. The authority is the Food Standards Agency, and your local authority’s environmental health team will advise you directly and free of charge. If you are unsure, ask them — they would far rather answer a question than investigate an incident.

What Natasha’s Law is

Natasha’s Law is the common name for changes that came into force on 1 October 2021, following the death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse from an allergic reaction to a baguette that carried no ingredients label. It closed a gap for one specific category of food: prepacked for direct sale, usually shortened to PPDS.

Food that is PPDS must carry the name of the food and a full list of ingredients, with any of the 14 regulated allergens emphasised in the list — typically in bold.

The distinction that decides whether it applies to you

Food is PPDS when it is packaged at the same place it is sold to the customer, and it is packaged before the customer orders it. The sandwich already made up and sitting in the chiller is the classic case.

Food you pack after someone has ordered it is generally not PPDS. If your drop works the way most do — orders come in through the week, you cook on Friday, and you portion into containers with a name on each — that is usually not prepacked for direct sale, because the food did not exist in its packaging until the order did.

This is the part that catches people out, in both directions. A seller who batch-cooks on Thursday, packs everything into labelled tubs, and then offers whatever is left at a market stall or from their door is much closer to PPDS than one who packs to order — even though the food is identical.

Not PPDS does not mean no duty

This is where the “you must label everything” guides go wrong in one direction and complacency goes wrong in the other. If your food is not PPDS, you do not need the full ingredients label — but you still have a legal duty to provide accurate allergen information about all 14 allergens, and to make clear how a customer can get it.

That information can be given in writing or orally. If you give it orally, the FSA requires a written notice placed somewhere clearly visible, explaining how a customer can obtain it — so “ask me” only counts if something tells them to ask. What you cannot do is not know the answer.

If you sell online, there is a second requirement

Selling at a distance — which includes taking orders through a link, a form, or a group chat — adds a timing rule that surprises people. Allergen information has to be available twice: before the customer completes their order, and again when the food is handed over.

In practice that means the allergen information belongs next to the item at the moment someone is deciding, not only on a sticker they see at the door. A seller who puts it only on the tub has met half the requirement.

For the handover half, the FSA’s recommended methods are a sticker on the container naming the allergens, or a menu included with the order that lets the customer identify them — so they can check the right item before they eat it.

The 14 allergens

These are the ones the law regulates. Everything else, however severe an individual reaction, sits outside this list.

Celery
Cereals containing gluten — wheat, rye, barley, oats
Crustaceans — prawns, crab, lobster
Eggs
Fish
Lupin
Milk
Molluscs — mussels, squid, oysters
Mustard
Peanuts
Sesame
Soybeans
Sulphur dioxide and sulphites, above 10mg/kg or 10mg/litre — that is, 10 parts per million
Tree nuts — almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, brazils, pistachios, macadamias

A word on “may contain”

Precautionary labelling is voluntary and it is not a substitute for knowing your ingredients. Used honestly — a genuine shared-kitchen risk you cannot design out — it is useful. Used defensively on everything, it tells an allergic customer nothing and trains them to ignore it, which is worse than saying nothing at all.

What to actually do this week

Write out the full ingredients for each thing you sell, once. Not from memory — from the packets, including the ingredients of compound items like a stock cube or a sauce.
Mark which of the 14 appear in each dish.
Put that where a customer sees it while they are choosing, not only at handover.
Keep it with the recipe, so when you change a supplier you remember to change the label.
Ring your local authority’s environmental health team and describe how you actually work.

The Next Drop has allergen labels built into each item for exactly this reason: the tags you set are shown to the buyer on the ordering page, which is the “before they order” half of the distance-selling requirement. It does not write your ingredients list for you, and it cannot tell you whether your particular setup is PPDS — that is a conversation with your council.

Sources

This page was written against the FSA’s own guidance and checked against it on 11 September 2026:

Introduction to allergen labelling for PPDS food — the PPDS definition and what the label must carry
Allergen guidance for food businesses — the 14 allergens and the written-notice requirement
Distance selling and pre-ordering best practice — the two-stage rule for online and phone orders

If you are setting up the ordering side too, our guide to taking orders in a WhatsApp group covers the rest.