Allergens
There are 14 allergens that must be declared if used as an ingredient in:
Prepacked food, and
Food sold loose, which includes:
- food sold in restaurants, canteens, cafes, crèches, takeaways etc.
- food packed in a premises at a customer’s request e.g. sandwich made up and placed in a plastic triangle pack
- food made, packed and sold from the same premises e.g. lasagne made in a café and packaged and sold from a fridge in the café as takeaway for customers or sold on to a mass caterer
The 14 allergens
- Cereals containing gluten - wheat (such as spelt and khorasan wheat), rye, barley, oats Note: The cereal name e.g 'wheat', must be declared and highlighted, not 'gluten'
- Crustaceans e.g. crabs, prawns, lobsters
- Eggs
- Fish
- Peanuts
- Soybeans
- Milk
- Nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecan nuts, brazil nuts, pistachio nuts, macademia) Note: The name of the nut, e.g. 'almond', must be declared and highlighted, not 'nuts'
- Celery
- Mustard
- Sesame Seeds
- Sulphur Dioxide and sulphites (at concentrations of more than 10mg/kg or 10mg/L in terms of total sulphur dioxide) – used as a preservative
- Lupin (not very common in Ireland)
- Molluscs e.g. mussels, oysters, squid, snails
Note: there are some derivatives of these allergens which are so highly processed that they are not considered an allergenic risk and so do not need to be highlighted as allergens. View the full list of allergens and exemptions
Remember! When checking your product for allergenic ingredients to declare, don’t forget to check ingredients of ingredients. For example, if you’ve used ketchup in your recipe, you need to check the ketchup ingredients for allergens.
Frequently Asked Questions
For more detailed information have a look at our frequently asked questions section where we’ve put together the questions we get asked most on allergen labelling
Guidance
Order hard copies of these publications
Legislation
Get more detailed information on the legislation on providing allergen information.
Menucal
This online tool can be used to keep track of the allergens in your recipes.
Find out more about Menucal
Allergen Alerts
Food allergen alerts are issued by the FSAI to let consumers with food allergies or intolerances know about the possible risk from a particular food
Subscribe to receive these alerts by email or SMS
Radio Ad
Listen to the FSAI radio advertisement on food allergens (MP3).
Last reviewed: 19/9/2017