Natasha's Law for Food Market and Artisan Producer Sellers

Farmers' markets, food festivals, and artisan food markets are full of small producers selling baked goods, preserves, charcuterie, and prepared foods. If you sell food that is packaged before customers arrive at your stall, Natasha's Law applies to you regardless of the size of your business.

The "Pre-Packed for Direct Sale" Test at Markets

Ask yourself: is the food packaged before a customer picks it up or asks for it? If yes, it is PPDS food and requires full Natasha's Law labelling.

Biscuits in a cellophane bag tied with ribbon: PPDS. A cake slice cut and boxed in front of the customer: non-prepacked. Jars of sauce or preserves made off-site: these are fully prepacked food, which has different (but also well-established) labelling requirements.

Practical Labelling for Small Producers

Small-scale producers at markets face a cost and logistics challenge with labelling. Practical solutions include:

• Label printer loaded with templates — print labels fresh for each market
• Pre-printed roll labels with product name, ingredients, and allergen emphasis
• Handwritten labels — legally acceptable if legible, correctly formatted, and contain all required information

The key requirement is that allergens within the ingredient list are emphasised (bold, uppercase, different colour, or underlined) — not simply listed in a separate line.

When Recipes Change Between Markets

If you adjust a recipe between markets — a different flour blend, a new supplier for butter — you must update your labels before the next market. Using old labels on new-recipe products is non-compliant.

Understanding the 14 Major Allergens You Must Declare

The 14 allergens regulated under UK food law cover a wide range of common ingredients that appear frequently in artisan food production. These are: celery, cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, peanuts, sesame, soybeans, sulphur dioxide and sulphites (above 10mg/kg), and tree nuts. As a market seller, it is easy to assume that only a few of these are relevant to your products, but cross-contamination risks and unexpected ingredient sources mean you should audit every single product carefully against the full list.

Many small producers are surprised to discover allergens hiding in secondary ingredients. A stock cube added to a savoury pastry filling may contain celery and sulphites. A dusting of icing sugar bought from a new supplier may be processed in a facility handling nuts. Mustard can appear in spice blends and marinades where it is not immediately obvious. Reading every supplier ingredient declaration before your next market is not bureaucratic caution — it is a legal necessity that protects both your customers and your business.

When an allergen is present even in small quantities as a result of your recipe, it must appear in your ingredient list with emphasis. The emphasis must be visually distinct — using bold text, capitalisation, a contrasting colour, or underlining — applied consistently across every allergen in that list. A separate allergen summary box alongside the ingredient list is a useful addition for customers scanning labels quickly at a busy stall, but it does not replace the emphasis requirement within the ingredient list itself.

Handling Cross-Contamination Disclosures at Your Stall

Cross-contamination warnings such as "may contain nuts" or "made in a kitchen that handles gluten" are voluntary under Natasha's Law but carry significant practical and reputational weight. The Food Standards Agency advises that these statements should only be used where a genuine, assessed risk of cross-contamination exists — not as a blanket disclaimer applied to every product. Overuse of precautionary labelling can actually undermine trust with allergen-affected customers who rely on those statements to make safe choices.

If you bake at home and produce both gluten-containing and gluten-free products in the same kitchen, you should assess your cleaning procedures, equipment separation, and ingredient storage honestly before deciding whether a cross-contamination statement is warranted. Allergen-affected customers appreciate producers who have clearly thought through their processes. A brief verbal explanation at the stall, backed by accurate written labelling, goes a long way toward building the kind of customer loyalty that keeps people returning to your pitch week after week.

It is worth keeping a written record of your cross-contamination risk assessment, even if it is only a single page. Environmental health officers visiting markets increasingly ask to see evidence that producers have considered allergen management in their production environment, not just on their labels. Having a documented process — however simple — demonstrates that your business takes food safety seriously and reduces your exposure if a complaint or incident is ever investigated.

Selling Online Alongside Your Market Stall

Many artisan producers who began at markets now sell the same products through an online shop, and this creates an additional compliance layer to manage. When food is sold online and dispatched to customers, the labelling requirements for PPDS food still apply, but the label must accompany the product physically when it arrives. You cannot rely on an online product description alone to fulfil your allergen information duty — the physical packaging that reaches the customer must carry the compliant label.

Running an online shop also gives you the opportunity to present allergen information in a richer, more accessible format than a small stall label allows. A well-structured product page can display a full ingredient list with allergen emphasis, a clear cross-contamination statement where relevant, and a summary of which of the 14 allergens are present or absent. This level of transparency reassures customers before they purchase and reduces the volume of pre-order queries you receive about specific ingredients. Tools like Allergen Matrix are designed specifically to help food sellers structure and display this information cleanly across their product catalogue.

Consistency between your physical labels and your online listings is important and often overlooked. If your online product page lists sesame as absent but your revised recipe now includes a tahini-based glaze, you are non-compliant on both fronts simultaneously. Treating your online allergen information and your physical labels as a single system — updated together whenever a recipe changes — is the most reliable way to stay on top of your obligations as your product range grows.

What to Do If a Customer Has an Allergic Reaction at Your Stall

No market producer wants to face this situation, but preparing for it in advance means you can respond quickly and appropriately if it ever occurs. If a customer reports a reaction that they believe is connected to something purchased from your stall, your first priority is to direct them to seek medical attention immediately, particularly if they are showing any signs of anaphylaxis. Do not attempt to diagnose the reaction or suggest it is unlikely to be connected to your product.

After ensuring the customer is receiving appropriate care, you should preserve any remaining product from that batch and retain your recipe notes, supplier invoices, and the label used on that product. This documentation will be important if the incident is investigated by environmental health or if the customer pursues a complaint. Notifying your local authority or environmental health team proactively demonstrates responsible practice and is advisable in any serious allergen incident, even if you are not yet certain your product was the cause.

Reviewing your labelling and recipe records after any incident — even a minor one — is a sound practice. Sometimes a customer query or mild reaction reveals a labelling gap that you were not aware of: a supplier who changed their formulation without notifying you, or an ingredient whose allergen status was misunderstood. Treating these moments as learning opportunities rather than threats strengthens your processes and reduces the likelihood of a more serious incident in the future. Keeping accurate, up-to-date allergen records for every product you sell is the single most protective step any small food producer can take.

Keeping Records That Support Your Market Labelling

Good record-keeping is the backbone of allergen compliance for any small food business, and market sellers are no exception. For each product you sell, you should maintain a current recipe document that lists every ingredient by its full name, the supplier it came from, and the allergen status declared by that supplier. This does not need to be a complex system — a simple spreadsheet updated before each market works well — but it must reflect the actual recipe you are using at that event, not the version you made three months ago.

Supplier ingredient declarations should be filed and reviewed regularly, because suppliers change their formulations and manufacturing facilities without always communicating those changes proactively to customers. Requesting written ingredient and allergen information from every supplier annually — and again whenever you switch to a new product line from them — is a straightforward habit that catches many of the compliance gaps that lead to mislabelling. If a supplier cannot provide clear written allergen information, that is itself a significant warning sign worth acting on before you incorporate their ingredient into a product sold to the public.

When you are preparing for a market, build a label review step into your packing process. Before you load products into your vehicle, check that the label on each product matches the current recipe document for that product. It takes only a few minutes but creates a reliable checkpoint that prevents old or incorrect labels from reaching customers. This kind of systematic approach, however simple, is exactly what environmental health officers and food safety auditors are looking for when they assess whether a small food business is managing its allergen obligations responsibly.

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