What Natasha's Law Means for Your Food Business

Natasha's Law requires full allergen labelling on any food packed on your premises before a customer chooses it, known as PPDS food. It applies to bakeries, cafés, delis, and market stalls alike. Get this wrong and Trading Standards can act, no matter how small your business is.

Where the law came from

Natasha's Law is the common name for the Food Information (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2019, in force since 1 October 2021. It followed the death of teenager Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who had a fatal allergic reaction to sesame baked into a baguette that carried no allergen labelling.

Before this law, allergen information for food packed on-site only had to be given on request. Natasha's Law closed that gap for one specific category of food: Prepacked for Direct Sale, or PPDS.

Wales and Northern Ireland have equivalent legislation, and Scotland applies the same allergen standard in practice, so the rule effectively works the same across the whole of the UK.

Is your product PPDS?

The test isn't what kind of food business you run. It's how and when the food is packaged, relative to the sale.

• A sandwich made and sealed before a customer picks it from the chiller: PPDS
• A sandwich made to order while the customer waits, then wrapped: not PPDS
• Cakes packaged in cellophane before a market stall opens: PPDS
• Loose cakes on a stand, bagged only once chosen: not PPDS

If in doubt, treat it as PPDS. Enforcement officers apply the same default, and it's the safer commercial call.

What you need on the label

A compliant PPDS label needs:

1. The name of the food
2. A full ingredients list, in descending order of weight
3. All 14 legally recognised allergens emphasised wherever they appear

If your food isn't PPDS, you still need to make allergen information available on request, even if it's just a verbal answer or a printed sheet by the till.

The takeaway

Most food businesses don't fall foul of Natasha's Law through carelessness. It happens through drift: a supplier changes an ingredient, a new product launches on an old template, or nobody owns the final allergen check before a print run goes out. Getting the PPDS test right at the start is the cheapest way to avoid that.