If you’re going to skip parts of food labeling because you’re cottage food exempt - and a lot of bakers do - this is the most important part not to skip.

Allergen labeling is governed primarily by federal law. Enforcement and the exact interaction with state cottage food laws can vary, but in general, cottage food exemptions do not remove the obligation to declare major food allergens. If you sell packaged baked goods to consumers, the general rule is that you need to declare the major food allergens on the label, and the rules are very specific about how. There are narrow exceptions, but the safe default is to declare.

I’m Meir. I built FoodShop, which automates allergen tracking for home bakers. None of this is legal advice - I’m not a lawyer - but the rules below are based directly on FDA guidance and they’re worth understanding clearly.

Why allergen labeling matters more than the rest

A missing “made in a home kitchen” disclaimer can earn you a fine. A mislabeled allergen can put a customer in the ER. That’s the gap.

Undeclared allergens are consistently among the leading causes of FDA food recalls in the US. The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) carries both civil and criminal penalties under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. And in real terms, if a child with a peanut allergy goes into anaphylaxis after eating one of your cookies, the cottage food exemption is not the wall between you and that family’s lawyer.

This is the labeling section to get right.

The Big 9 allergens

FALCPA designates nine major food allergens. These nine are commonly cited as accounting for the large majority of food allergen reactions in the US. They are:

  1. Milk
  2. Eggs
  3. Fish (specific species required - cod, salmon, etc.)
  4. Crustacean shellfish (specific species required - shrimp, crab, lobster, etc.)
  5. Tree nuts (specific type required - almonds, pecans, walnuts, etc.)
  6. Peanuts
  7. Wheat
  8. Soybeans
  9. Sesame (added effective January 2023 via the FASTER Act)

Sesame is the one that catches home bakers off guard. It was added to the list relatively recently, and a lot of older recipes, ingredient sheets, and templates still don’t account for it.

If any of these nine are an intentional ingredient in your product, even in a small amount, they must be declared on the label. Unintentional cross-contact is handled separately (see the cross-contact section below).

How to declare allergens correctly

There are three common compliant approaches. Pick one and use it consistently.

Method 1: Use the common name in the ingredient list itself.

If the allergen appears in the ingredient list under its common name, you don’t need anything else. Example:

Ingredients: wheat flour, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla extract, salt.

“Wheat” and “eggs” appear by their common allergen names, so they’re already declared. If you use butter (a milk product), milk is implied. To be safe, either name “milk” explicitly somewhere on the label or add a Contains statement (see Method 3).

Method 2: Put the common allergen name in parentheses after a technical name.

If you use a technical or less-common name for an ingredient, follow it with the allergen in parentheses. Example:

Ingredients: durum (wheat), lecithin (soy), sodium caseinate (milk), natural flavors.

This is the rule that catches a lot of producers. “Lecithin” alone isn’t enough - it has to be “lecithin (soy)” because lecithin is commonly derived from soybeans.

Method 3: Add a Contains statement after the ingredient list.

The cleanest, hardest-to-mess-up option. Example:

Ingredients: flour, sugar, butter, eggs, chocolate chips, vanilla extract, salt. Contains: wheat, milk, eggs, soy.

The Contains statement must list every Big 9 allergen present in the product. It cannot be partial. If milk, wheat, eggs, and soy are all in the product, all four must appear. Same font size as the ingredient list - you can’t use tiny text to hide it.

For most home bakers, Method 3 is the easiest to get right. Many FDA enforcement actions for missing allergen declarations involve products that tried Method 1 or 2 and missed a hidden allergen.

The hidden allergens that catch home bakers off guard

Most allergens are obvious. Some aren’t. These are the ones I see home bakers miss the most:

  • Lecithin in chocolate chips - almost always from soy. Add (soy) or include soy in your Contains statement.
  • Natural flavors - can contain milk, soy, or other allergens. Check the spec sheet of the ingredient you bought, or call the manufacturer.
  • Vanilla extract - usually no allergens, but some “imitation vanilla” products contain dairy.
  • Margarine and shortening - sometimes contain soy or dairy. Read the label of the product you bought.
  • Baking spray - many contain soy or wheat. Worth a glance.
  • Sesame - increasingly added to commercial bread products and seed blends, even when not previously included. After the 2023 sesame rule, some commercial bakeries actually started adding sesame to recipes that didn’t previously contain it, to manage cross-contact risk. Check every product you bring into your kitchen.

The rule of thumb: if an ingredient is processed or has multiple components, treat it as a black box until you’ve checked the spec sheet. Don’t assume.

The “may contain” question - cross-contact warnings

You’ll see warnings like “may contain traces of peanuts” or “manufactured in a facility that also processes tree nuts” on commercial products. These are called advisory or cross-contact statements.

Two things to know:

  1. They are not required by FALCPA. The FDA does not mandate cross-contact warnings. They’re voluntary.
  2. They are strongly recommended if your kitchen handles allergens for other products. If you bake peanut butter cookies on Tuesday and sugar cookies on Thursday in the same kitchen, even with thorough cleaning, the sugar cookies should carry an advisory statement.

Recommended wording for a home kitchen:

“Made in a home kitchen that also handles peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, wheat, and soy.”

List every Big 9 allergen that ever passes through your kitchen, not just the ones in this product. It’s better to over-disclose than to leave a customer guessing.

If you have a dedicated allergen-free zone or operation (rare for cottage food), you can be more specific. Otherwise, assume cross-contact is possible.

What about gluten-free claims?

“Gluten-free” is its own regulatory category. If you put “gluten-free” on your label, you’re claiming the product contains less than 20 parts per million of gluten, and you’re subject to FDA’s gluten-free labeling rule. This means:

  • Your recipe has to actually be gluten-free
  • Your kitchen has to manage cross-contact appropriately
  • You may need third-party testing depending on your state and what claims you make

If you bake regular wheat bread on the same surface, you cannot honestly call your “gluten-free” cookies gluten-free. The safest approach is to skip the gluten-free claim entirely. Be aware that even alternative phrases like “made with gluten-free ingredients” can be interpreted as implied gluten-free claims and may trigger FDA gluten-free labeling requirements. If you want to use any gluten-free related language, check the current FDA guidance first.

How FoodShop handles allergens

This is one of the main reasons I built FoodShop in the first place. Allergen tracking shouldn’t depend on you remembering every sub-ingredient at 11pm.

Inside FoodShop, every ingredient in your pantry carries its full allergen profile. You can add ingredients three ways: pull from our curated database of ~8,000 SR Legacy items (based on USDA nutrition data, with allergens flagged by FoodShop based on standard ingredient definitions), scan photos of the front and nutrition label of a product you’ve bought (AI extracts the data), or add one manually. Whichever path you choose, the platform records the allergens.

When you build a recipe, FoodShop looks at every ingredient you’ve added and pulls forward every Big 9 allergen that appears. You never have to remember that the lecithin in your chocolate chips is from soy, or which sub-ingredient triggers a declaration. The system flags it automatically.

The result is a Contains statement based on the ingredients in your pantry, using your state’s documented allergen format. Always verify the final label against your state’s current requirements before printing. If you add a new ingredient to a recipe, the allergens update. If you swap one product for another in your pantry, the allergens update.

What to do this week

If you’ve never reviewed your labels for allergen compliance, here’s the fastest audit:

  1. Pull the labels for your top 3-5 sellers.
  2. For each product, write down every ingredient you actually use - including the brand-name product, not just the generic name (e.g. “Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips,” not just “chocolate chips”).
  3. For each ingredient, look up its allergen profile. Read the actual product label or spec sheet, don’t guess.
  4. Compile every Big 9 allergen across all ingredients into a single Contains statement.
  5. If your kitchen also handles other allergens for other products, add a cross-contact line.
  6. Update your labels this weekend.

If you find an allergen you weren’t declaring before, treat it as urgent. Don’t ship more product with the old label.

Going deeper

Last thing

Most home bakers will never face a recall, an inspection, or a lawsuit. Of the ones who do face it, allergen mistakes are one of the most common causes - more so than missing disclaimers or other labeling gaps. The difference between safe and not-safe is usually one ingredient nobody thought to check.

You don’t need to be paranoid. You need to read the labels of your ingredients, list every Big 9 allergen that’s in your product, and add a cross-contact line if your kitchen handles others. That’s it. Once.

If you want the labels generated automatically and the allergen tracking handled in the background, you can try FoodShop at foodshop.biz. If you’d rather DIY, the framework above is enough to get clearer, more complete allergen labels on your products this weekend.

Either way, do the audit. Allergen mistakes are the one labeling mistake worth losing sleep over.

If you get stuck, message me. I’m in the chat.

– Meir, FoodShop