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Allergens
Allergen labelling is the part of a pack with the most legal weight behind it — and the part most often misread, because two similar-looking phrases carry completely different obligations.
EU law names fourteen substances that must be declared whenever they are used as an ingredient: cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10 mg/kg, lupin and molluscs.
When one of them is an ingredient it must be emphasised inside the ingredient list — in bold, or otherwise typographically distinguished — and there is no minimum quantity below which it can be left out. That is the part of the label with real legal weight behind it.
Everything printed after the list — “may contain”, “made in a facility that also handles” — is a different category of statement altogether, and the difference is the single most useful thing to understand about allergen labelling.
These pages describe what the rules require. They never tell you whether a food is safe for you: that depends on your diagnosis, your clinician, and the pack in your hand, which remains the authority.