Scan your ingredient list against the FDA "Big 9" allergens and auto-generate the compliant "Contains:" statement.
Detected allergens and your "Contains:" statement appear here.
Based on FALCPA and the FASTER Act (sesame, 2023). This tool flags likely allergens from ingredient names; always verify against your actual formula and supplier specs.
US law recognises nine major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. Sesame is the newest, added by the FASTER Act, and it is the one that most often catches producers out - it appears in far more bread, bun and spice-blend products than people expect, and a label written before that change may simply be missing it.
Declaration happens one of two ways under FALCPA. Either the allergen's food source name appears in the ingredient statement itself - in parentheses after the ingredient where the name is not already obvious - or it appears in a separate "Contains:" statement immediately after or adjacent to the ingredient list.
If you use a Contains statement, it must list every major allergen present in the product, not only the ones that were not obvious from the ingredient names. A statement reading "Contains: Milk" on a product that also contains wheat is incomplete even though wheat flour is listed plainly above it.
This is the most common defect this tool surfaces: partial Contains statements, written to flag the surprising allergens and silently omitting the obvious ones.
"May contain", "processed in a facility that also processes", and similar cross-contact advisories are voluntary. They address the risk of unintended presence from shared equipment or lines.
They cannot be used in place of a required declaration, and they cannot be used to hedge an allergen you deliberately put in the product. An advisory on an intentional ingredient is a labeling failure, not a precaution - and the FDA has been clear that advisory labeling should not substitute for good manufacturing practice.
Undeclared allergens are consistently among the leading causes of food recalls in the United States. The mechanism is almost always mundane rather than negligent: a supplier reformulates, a shared line introduces cross-contact, or a recipe changes and the declaration does not follow it.
That is an argument for deriving the declaration from the ingredient list rather than maintaining it separately - which is what this tool does, and what the label generator does automatically when you build a product from a recipe.
Allergen lists are national. The EU declares 14 allergens under Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 and requires them to be emphasised typographically within the ingredient list rather than in a separate Contains line. Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand each maintain their own lists and their own conventions.
This tool applies the US Big 9. If you export, check the destination market's list rather than assuming yours travels.
To see allergens across every product at once, use the Allergen Matrix; for foods sold in the UK, read Natasha's Law and PPDS labels, and decode additive codes with the E-Number Decoder.
Reference information, not legal advice. Requirements change and turn on facts specific to your product - confirm against the current regulation before relying on it.
Milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. Sesame is the ninth and newest: the FASTER Act added it as a major food allergen with effect from 1 January 2023. Molluscan shellfish such as clams, oysters and scallops are not on the US list, though they are covered in the EU and several other markets, so a product exported from the US may need a longer declaration than its domestic label carries.
One of two forms is required, not both. Either each major allergen is named in parentheses inside the ingredient list, or a separate "Contains" statement appears immediately after or adjacent to it. If you use the "Contains" statement it must list every Big 9 allergen present in the food, including those already obvious from an ingredient name. The statement sits alongside the ingredient list, never in place of it.
Yes. The specific species is required: "almond" rather than "tree nut", "cod" rather than "fish". The same applies to crustacean shellfish. Grouping them under the category name is one of the more common reasons a US label is found non-compliant, and it is also the detail an importer in another market is most likely to query.
No. Precautionary allergen labelling is voluntary in the United States, and FDA has not defined the wording or set a threshold that triggers it. It therefore cannot substitute for allergen controls in the plant, and it cannot be used to cover an allergen that is genuinely an ingredient. Several other markets are moving toward defining these statements, so check the destination market rather than assuming the US position travels.
No. It reads the ingredient statement you paste and flags the Big 9 terms it recognises, including many derivative names. It cannot know your processing aids, your rework, your shared equipment or a supplier change you have not told it about. Treat the output as a first pass over the wording and keep the plant-level allergen assessment where it belongs.
Every one is cited to the paragraph it comes from.