Allergen declaration

An allergen declaration names the substances in a food that a regulator requires you to call out: the list runs to fourteen in the EU and nine in the United States, and the two lists are not identical. On a label they are emphasized inside the ingredient list, usually in bold.

The important property is that allergens belong to ingredients, and a recipe inherits them. Nobody declares allergens on a sauce. They declare them on the mustard that went into the mash that went into the sauce.

Carry-over is where it goes wrong

A sauce uses a fermented mash. The mash uses a spice blend. The spice blend contains mustard. The sauce label must say mustard, and nothing about the sauce’s own ingredient list mentions it.

That is one level of indirection more than most people track by hand, and it is why allergen errors cluster around sub-recipes and bought-in preparations. Every time a supplier reformulates something you buy, your own declarations can change without anything in your recipe moving.

Cross-contact is a different claim

“May contain” statements are about your process rather than your recipe: shared equipment, shared air, a shared production line. They are not a substitute for declaring what is actually in the product, and in most regimes they are voluntary and must not be used to hedge a known ingredient.

Keep the two apart. One comes from the formula; the other comes from how you work.

In BatchDash

Allergens are held on the ingredient, in its compliance fields, alongside its INCI name and shelf life. A formula collects them from everything it uses, following sub-formulas all the way down, so a spice blend three levels deep still reaches the label.

The declaration flows into the label template with the rest of the batch data. What has to appear beside it is covered in what goes on a label.

Review it before it prints. The system can follow the graph; only you know whether your supplier changed their blend last month.