What are the key food labelling requirements in the UK?

9 minutes ago

5 min read

Your food or drink product can be safe to eat but still get pulled from the shelves because of what’s printed on the pack.

Labelling errors are the biggest single cause of food recalls in the UK. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) recorded 141 product recalls in 2025, and around a quarter of them came down to allergen labelling mistakes.

Very few involved a contaminated batch. In most cases, the label either failed to declare an allergen, carried an out-of-date ingredients list, or hadn’t been updated after a recipe change.

The rules aren’t the same for every food product, either. What you must include on your label depends on whether your food is prepacked, prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) or sold loose. Getting that distinction wrong is often where the trouble starts.

This blog explains the key food labelling requirements in the UK, where businesses get caught out most often and what you can do about it.

Where the UK’s labelling rules come from

Most UK food labelling law falls under Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers. It was assimilated into UK law after Brexit. In England, it’s enforced through the Food Information Regulations 2014. Scotland and Wales have their own equivalent regulations. Northern Ireland is different. Under the Windsor Framework, the EU version of the rules still applies, so if you sell into both GB and NI, you need to keep an eye on both.

The Food Safety Act 1990 sits over the top of all this. Section 15 makes it an offence to label or present food in a way that’s false or likely to mislead. That applies even when all the mandatory information on your label is present and correct.

The FSA sets policy for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Food Standards Scotland does the same north of the border. Enforcement falls to local authorities, usually trading standards for labelling and environmental health for allergens and food safety. Officers can issue improvement notices and require products to be withdrawn. Businesses that don’t act can be prosecuted.

Labelling also sits inside your wider food safety management system. So, if your allergen controls or HACCP plan are out of date, your labels probably are, too.

Mandatory information on prepacked food

Prepacked food relates to anything packed before it’s offered for sale, where the contents can’t be changed without opening or altering the packaging. Its label must show:

The name of the food
A full ingredients list, in descending order of weight
Any of the 14 regulated allergens (see below), emphasised within the ingredients list
The net quantity
A use-by or best-before date
Any special storage conditions or conditions of use
The name and UK address of the food business operator
A nutrition declaration
Instructions for use, where the food would be hard to use properly without them

The nutrition declaration must show energy (in kJ and kcal), fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt, per 100g or 100ml. Some small producers supplying small quantities direct to consumers or local shops are exempt, although the exemption is narrow and it disappears the moment you make an explicit health or nutrition claim.

Use-by dates are all about safety. They go on highly perishable foods like fresh meat, fish and ready meals, and it’s illegal to sell anything past its use-by date. Best-before dates are about product quality, and food products can still be sold after it if they’re safe. However, putting a best-before on a product that needs a use-by is a food safety failure.

Some products carry extra requirements. These include a quantitative ingredient declaration showing the exact proportion of any ingredients named or pictured on the packaging relative to the total product, the alcoholic strength of drinks above 1.2% ABV, or the country of origin if leaving it off could mislead the customer.

Allergen labelling and Natasha’s Law

UK law lists 14 allergens that you must declare, namely:

Celery
Cereals containing gluten
Crustaceans
Eggs
Fish
Lupin
Milk
Molluscs
Mustard
Peanuts
Sesame
Soya
Sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10mg per kg or litre
Tree nuts

On prepacked food, you must emphasise each allergen within the ingredients list, usually in bold. A ‘may contain…’ box at the bottom of the pack won’t make it compliant.

Natasha’s Law came into force in 2021. It followed the tragic death of 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who had a fatal reaction to sesame baked into a baguette that carried no allergen information. Before the law changed, PPDS food didn’t need an ingredients list at all. Now, it must carry the name of the food and a full ingredients list, with any allergens emphasised.

PPDS covers food packed on the same premises it’s sold from, before the customer orders it, such as a sandwich made at 7am and put in your chiller, a slice of cake boxed up on the counter, or a tub of coleslaw at a deli. It also applies to food packed and sold from the same market stall or food van. These labelling requirements aren’t just aimed at the big retail chains and manufacturers. They also apply to smaller businesses like sandwich shops, bakeries, farm shops and butchers who sell PPDS products.

‘May contain…’ labelling is voluntary. The FSA’s guidance says it should be used only where a risk assessment finds a cross-contamination risk you can’t remove. It won’t protect you if your allergen controls are poor.

All of this relies on knowing what’s in your products and updating your allergen matrix every time a recipe, ingredient or supplier changes.

Nutrition and health claims

You can only use nutrition and health claims that appear on the Great Britain nutrition and health claims (NHC) register.

‘Low fat’ means no more than 3g of fat per 100g for solids, or 1.5g per 100ml for liquids.

‘High fibre’ means at least 6g per 100g.

‘Source of protein’ requires at least 12% of the food’s energy to come from protein.

Health claims, which link a food or nutrient to a function of the body, must stick closely to the authorised wording. You should keep the evidence behind every health claim you make on file, because you’ll need it if trading standards or a competitor ever challenge it.

Products that are high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) face separate restrictions. Placement rules for larger retailers have applied since October 2022. And since January 2026, paid online advertising of in-scope products has been banned, along with TV adverts before 9pm. These are marketing rules more than labelling rules, but your nutritional data will dictate whether your product is in-scope.

How can Beacon Compliance help?

Getting your food labelling right means pulling your recipes, supplier specs, allergen controls, nutritional and shelf-life data together, and checking the results against rules that vary slightly between the four UK nations. For a business without a technical manager, that’s a lot to manage alongside production.

At Beacon Compliance, our team has more than 80 years’ combined industry experience working with food businesses of every size, including first-time producers and globally recognised brands.

We can review your labels against the current requirements, build or audit your allergen matrix, check your nutrition and health claims hold up, and arrange nutritional analysis and shelf-life testing. We can also make sure your labelling lines up with your HACCP plan, so a change in one gets picked up in the other. We provide on-site and off-site technical support. Get in touch to book a free, no-obligation consultation with our team.

And if you’re still developing your product, our guide to launching a new food product covers what to think about before you get to packaging.