The major food allergens, and what gets recalled for each

US law names nine major food allergens that have to appear on a label in plain language. Between them they account for 7,778 FDA enforcement records where a food contained one and the label did not say so.

The nine are milk, soy, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, sesame, fish, crustacean shellfish. The first eight come from FALCPA; sesame became the ninth on 1 January 2023 under the FASTER Act, which is recent enough that labels printed before it are still working through the supply chain.

Sulfites are listed here too and are not a major food allergen. They are declared under a separate rule, at or above 10 parts per million, and a plan that files them with the nine will be applying the wrong threshold. They are on this page because 261 recalls name them and a reader looking for that number should find it.

“Undeclared” is doing specific work in these records. It does not mean the food was contaminated; it means the allergen was genuinely present and the label failed to declare it, either because the wrong label went on the pack or because an ingredient carried an allergen nobody traced up the supply chain. That is why these recalls cluster in foods where the allergen is an ordinary ingredient rather than a stray one.

Every record below also appears on the undeclared allergen hazard page, which is the parent. These 10 pages are a second dimension on that one hazard, not 10 separate hazards.

• Milk2,840Milk is the most frequently undeclared major allergen in FDA food recalls, and it reaches products through whey, casein and shared equipment far more often than through an ingredient anyone would call milk.
• Soy1,478Soy is usually undeclared as lecithin, an emulsifier that arrives inside another ingredient and is easy to lose track of between a supplier's specification and a finished label.
• Wheat1,396Wheat is a major food allergen and is separate from gluten, which is a labelling claim rather than an allergen: a product can be free of wheat and still fail a gluten-free claim.
• Peanuts1,076Peanut is the allergen most often recalled as cross-contact rather than as an ingredient, which makes it a question about shared lines and changeover cleaning rather than about a recipe.
• Tree nuts1,048Tree nuts are a single major allergen class covering almonds, cashews, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, hazelnuts, macadamias and Brazil nuts, and a label has to name which one.
• Eggs776Egg reaches finished products as a binder, a wash and a lecithin source, so an undeclared egg recall is usually a specification that did not carry the allergen forward rather than a missing ingredient.
• Sulfites261Sulfites are not a major food allergen.
• Fish219Fish is a major food allergen that a label must identify by species, and it is most often undeclared through anchovy in a sauce or a seasoning.
• Crustacean shellfish182Crustacean shellfish covers shrimp, crab and lobster, and it is a separate major allergen from molluscs such as clams and oysters, which are not one.
• Sesame169Sesame became the ninth major food allergen in the United States on 1 January 2023 under the FASTER Act, which is why recall counts naming it rise sharply from that date rather than because more products contain it.