Allergen detection, country-by-country
Nine allergens in the US, fourteen in the EU, twenty-eight in Japan, and tree nuts must be named by species. NFL tracks all of it from the same recipe, per jurisdiction.
The US nine, FALCPA + FASTER Act
US law recognizes nine major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and (since the FASTER Act took effect in January 2023) sesame. Each must be declared either by emphasis within the ingredient statement or in a separate "Contains:" statement placed immediately after it; NFL supports both methods and renders whichever you choose in the correct position on the label.
Check an allergen and the declaration updates live, in the same typography as the rest of the label preview. Because the allergen state is part of the recipe record, it travels with the recipe through cloud saves, duplications, and exports; an approved declaration cannot silently drift from its formula.
Species-level tracking for tree nuts and fish
"Tree nuts" is not a legal declaration; FDA requires the specific type: almond, walnut, cashew, pecan. Fish and crustacean shellfish work the same way: cod, salmon, shrimp, crab. NFL tracks allergens at species level, so your "Contains:" line names exactly what regulation demands.
Pick the species once; the declaration writes itself correctly everywhere it appears.
EU-14, Japan-28, Korea-22: the list follows the market
Allergen law is jurisdictional. The EU's Annex II lists fourteen substances, adding celery, mustard, lupin, molluscs, and sulphites to the familiar set; Japan tracks twenty-eight; Korea twenty-two; Australia and New Zealand have their own roster. Ship the same granola bar to three markets and the legally required allergen panel differs in all three.
Switch the label format and the allergen panel adjusts to that regulator's list, part of how international formats work throughout NFL.
Auto-detection from your ingredients, sub-recipes included
Pick "wheat flour" from USDA FoodData Central and the wheat allergen flags itself. Add "soy lecithin" and soy checks its own box. Detection runs on the actual ingredient rows of your recipe, so the allergen state stays in lockstep with the formula rather than depending on someone's memory during a reformulation.
It reaches through sub-recipes too: if the teriyaki glaze inside your noodle bowl contains soy and wheat, those allergens surface on the finished product automatically; nested components cannot hide a declaration. Manual override remains available for genuine edge cases like highly refined oils, where regulation treats the derivative differently from its source. The result feeds straight into your ingredient statement and "Contains:" line together.
Cross-contact and advisory statements
Precautionary allergen labelling ("May contain tree nuts", "Made in a facility that also processes peanuts") is voluntary in the US but must be truthful and not a substitute for good manufacturing practice. NFL gives advisory statements their own field, rendered as a separate line adjacent to the ingredient statement and "Contains:" declaration, matching FDA guidance on placement.
Keeping advisories structurally separate from the mandatory declaration matters: reviewers and retailers increasingly check that the two are not blurred together, and a clean separation makes your label easier to audit. Common questions about when an advisory is appropriate, and when it reads as ass-covering that dilutes real warnings, are covered in the labels FAQ.
Because allergens are the #1 recall trigger
Undeclared allergens are consistently the leading cause of US food recalls, usually not because a company did not know its formula, but because a label and a formula fell out of sync somewhere between reformulation and print. NFL's design attacks exactly that failure mode: one recipe record drives the ingredient statement, the allergen declaration, and the nutrition panel together, so they cannot diverge.
And if the worst happens, the inventory module closes the loop: lot codes on every production run and a one-click recall report PDF that shows exactly which lots and shipments are affected. Try the full chain free in the generator.