Home › Guides › Cottage Food Allergen Labeling: How to Declare the 9 Major Allergens
If you sell food you make at home, allergen labeling is one of the few places where a small mistake can genuinely hurt someone. The good news: the core rules are clear, and once you know the nine allergens to watch for, the label mostly writes itself. Here is how to do it plainly and honestly.
Most of a cottage food label is bookkeeping: your business name, the product name, the ingredients, the net weight, and a disclaimer that the food was made in a home kitchen. Allergens are different. A customer with a peanut or milk allergy reads your label to decide whether your food is safe to eat, so this is the one section where being vague or incomplete can cause real harm.
The reassuring news is that you do not have to guess which ingredients count. Federal law names a specific, short list of allergens that must be called out clearly, and that same list is the backbone of nearly every state's cottage food labeling rule. Learn the list, disclose it plainly, and you have handled the hardest part.
Under U.S. federal law, there are nine major food allergens that must be declared on packaged food. The original eight were set by the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA); sesame was added as the ninth major allergen by the FASTER Act, effective January 1, 2023.
These nine account for the large majority of serious food-allergy reactions, which is why the law singles them out. If any of them is in your product, it has to be obvious to the person reading the label.
There are two accepted ways to declare a major allergen. The first is simply naming it clearly in your ingredient list using its common name (for example, writing "milk" rather than only "casein," or "wheat flour" rather than only "flour"). The second is a separate Contains statement placed at or near the end of the ingredient list.
A Contains statement lists the allergens present, like this: Contains: wheat, milk, eggs, soy. It must include every major allergen in the product, and it appears immediately after or next to the ingredient list. Even when you use a Contains statement, the underlying ingredient still needs to appear in the ingredient list itself. Be specific: name the actual tree nut ("almonds") and the specific fish or shellfish rather than the general category, since customers are often allergic to one and not another.
Allergen labeling is not only about what you deliberately put in the recipe. Cross-contact happens when a trace of an allergen gets into a food it was never meant to be in, usually through shared bowls, mixers, baking sheets, or a countertop where you also work with nuts, wheat, or other allergens.
A home kitchen is rarely a segregated allergen-free environment, and honest makers acknowledge that. A voluntary advisory statement such as "Made in a kitchen that also handles peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, and milk" helps allergic customers make an informed choice. Two important cautions: an advisory line never replaces declaring an allergen that is actually an ingredient, and how (or whether) states permit these statements can vary, so treat it as added honesty rather than a legal shortcut. When in doubt, disclose more, not less.
Here is the part people miss: the nine allergens come from federal law, but almost everything about how your cottage food label must look is decided by your state. Cottage food laws are run state by state, and they vary widely.
States differ on the details that matter for printing a label: the exact wording of the required home-kitchen disclaimer, the minimum font size, whether your permit or registration number must appear on the label, which foods you are even allowed to sell, and whether you may ship across state lines or only sell locally. A rule you read on a blog for one state may be wrong for yours. Always confirm the specifics against your state's requirements page before you finalize a label.
A practical order of operations: write your ingredient list in descending order by weight, add a Contains statement covering every major allergen present, consider a cross-contact advisory line, and then check the wording and formatting rules for your state. The allergen content is federal and stable; the layout, disclaimer text, and permit-number question are local.
This article is general information to help you understand allergen labeling, not legal advice. Your state's agriculture or health department is the authority on your label, and its guidance overrides any general summary. When you are ready to build the actual label, start from your state's page so the wording, font size, and required disclaimer match the rule you are actually held to.
Nine major allergens (milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, sesame) must be declared clearly, ideally with a plain "Contains" statement and an honest cross-contact note — but the exact label wording, font size, and permit rules come from your state, so confirm there before you print.
The exact disclaimer wording, its legal font size, and whether a permit number goes on the label are set by your state. Pick yours and get a compliant label in seconds.
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