Anyone serving food in Switzerland must be able to provide allergen information, and before the guest orders, not after. The rules sit in three enactments: the Foodstuffs Act (LMG), the Foodstuffs and Utility Articles Ordinance (LGV) and the FDHA Ordinance on Food Information (LIV). This article summarises what applies to food-service businesses. The cited ordinances are as of 1 July 2025.
Do restaurants in Switzerland have to declare allergens?
Yes. Anyone who places food on the market loose (that is, serves or hands it over unpackaged) must inform about it “in the same way as about prepacked food” (Art. 39 para. 1 LGV, SR 817.02). That includes the details on ingredients that can cause allergies or other undesirable reactions.
The duty covers the whole of community catering. The LGV expressly names restaurants, canteens, schools, hospitals and catering companies, as well as vehicles and fixed or mobile stalls (Art. 2 para. 1 LGV). The Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (BLV) also counts takeaways, bakeries and butcher’s shops as loose sale.
There is no exemption based on business size. A claim circulates online that small businesses with up to nine employees are exempt from written declaration. No such threshold appears in Art. 39 LGV or Art. 5 LIV; the conditions for oral information (below) apply equally to every business.
Nor does the duty depend on the person. Anyone who hands over their own baking has to inform about the allergens from the first item supplied. Selling homemade food keeps notification to the canton (Art. 20 LGV) separate, as its own question.
How to declare is governed by the LIV (SR 817.022.16). What to declare is set out in its Annex 6.
Which 14 allergens must be declared?
Subject to mandatory declaration are the 14 ingredient categories in Annex 6 LIV (anchored in Art. 10 LIV), each including the products derived from them. The list is substantively identical to Annex II of EU Regulation No 1169/2011; for Swiss establishments, the binding wording is the text of the LIV.
| No. | Allergen category per Annex 6 LIV (wording abridged) | Typical trap in the kitchen |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cereals containing gluten, namely wheat (such as spelt and Khorasan wheat), rye, barley, oats or hybridised strains thereof | Soy sauce usually contains wheat; likewise flour-thickened sauces and soups, and beer used for deglazing |
| 2 | Crustaceans | Shrimp paste in Thai curry pastes and Asian seasoning sauces |
| 3 | Eggs | Mayonnaise, fresh egg pasta, egg wash on pastry, consommé clarified with egg white |
| 4 | Fish | Worcestershire sauce and Caesar dressing often contain anchovies; fish sauce in Asian dishes |
| 5 | Peanuts | Peanut oil in the wok and deep fryer, satay sauces, Asian spice pastes |
| 6 | Soybeans | Soy lecithin in chocolate and baked goods, soy protein in vegetarian patties |
| 7 | Milk (including lactose) | Jus mounted with butter, cream in mashed potato, milk powder in stock cubes and spice blends |
| 8 | Tree nuts, namely almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios, macadamia or Queensland nuts | Ground almonds or hazelnuts in doughs and coatings, marzipan in desserts, walnut oil in dressing |
| 9 | Celery | Bouillon, soup greens and stocks almost always contain celery; likewise many spice blends |
| 10 | Mustard | Dressings, vinaigrettes, marinades and mayonnaises often contain mustard; mustard powder in spice blends |
| 11 | Sesame seeds | Sesame on burger buns and breads, tahini in hummus, sesame oil in Asian dishes |
| 12 | Sulphur dioxide and sulphites (above 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/l, expressed as SO₂) | Wine for deglazing and in reductions, dried fruit, dried mushrooms, processed potato products |
| 13 | Lupin | Lupin flour in gluten-free flour blends and baked goods, lupin protein in vegan meat substitutes |
| 14 | Molluscs | Oyster sauce in wok dishes, mussels in fish stocks and soups, squid in paella |
Three points to add:
- Annex 6 sets out defined exceptions, such as wheat-based glucose syrups, fully refined soybean oil, or fish gelatine used as a fining agent in beer and wine. When in doubt, check the text of the ordinance.
- Pine nuts and coconut are not on the Annex 6 list. Insects such as house-cricket powder (Acheta domesticus, authorised in Switzerland since 2023) are likewise not a separate allergen category there. Information duties on allergenicity still apply: according to the BLV, house-cricket powder can trigger reactions in people allergic to crustaceans, molluscs or dust mites, and the business must be able to inform about this.
- The trap examples are kitchen practice, not legal statements. Whether a specific product contains the allergen is decided by the recipe; what counts is the label and the supplier specification, not memory.
The full list of the 14 allergens, with the defined Annex 6 exceptions and the points where the wording differs from the EU list, breaks down each category one by one.
Is oral information enough, or must it be in writing?
Oral information is permitted, but only under two conditions, both of which must be met (Art. 5 para. 1 let. d LIV): first, a clearly visible written notice points out that the information can be obtained orally; second, the information is available to staff in writing, or a competent person can provide it immediately.
According to the BLV, the principle remains written declaration; the oral route is the exception, subject to conditions. On top of that comes Art. 5 para. 3 LIV: the information must be available at the moment the food is offered, that is, before the guest orders, not at some point during service.
For the visible notice there are officially endorsed wordings. The information leaflet of the Graubünden Office for Food Safety and Animal Health gives this model (translated from the German original):
“Dear guests, information on ingredients that can cause allergies or other undesirable reactions is available on request from our service staff.”
The “competent person” is, according to GastroSuisse, for example the chef or a trained member of the service team. In practice this means: even the oral route needs an up-to-date written document internally, or a person who genuinely knows every recipe. A notice plus improvisation at the table does not meet the conditions.
It never works entirely without writing anyway: the notice pointing to the oral allergen information must be in writing, and depending on the product, further details remain mandatory in writing, such as the origin of certain animal species or, since 1 February 2025, the country of production of bread and fine bakery goods in loose sale.
How do you declare allergens correctly on the menu?
Written details belong in the menu or on a poster; Art. 5 para. 2 LIV expressly allows both for community catering. For putting it into the menu, three formats have become established (GastroSuisse lists them as a voluntary supplement): a note in brackets directly by the dish, number or letter codes with a legend, or symbols.
The way there, without software, in five steps:
- Fix the recipes. Every dish with all its ingredients, including sub-recipes such as stocks, sauces and marinades.
- Check the ingredients. Go through the labels and supplier specifications of the products actually used; do not work from memory.
- Build an allergen matrix. Dishes in the rows, the 14 allergens in the columns. A ready-made allergen matrix is available as a free template.
- Transfer it into the menu. Codes or brackets plus a legend, or the notice with oral information (above).
- Brief the staff. Where the matrix is kept, who gives competent information, what applies in case of doubt.
One more point that almost every guide leaves out: traces and cross-contamination. Legally, unintentional mixing is treated differently from ingredients in the recipe: unintentional mixing under Art. 11 para. 5 does not have to be indicated in loose sale (Art. 5 para. 1 let. f LIV). But that does not release the business from allergen management. Cross-contamination must be prevented, assessed and documented as part of good procedural practice (Art. 11 para. 6 LIV); where there is a concrete risk, staff should be able to give reliable information. A blanket “may contain traces of everything” is no substitute for a clean declaration of the ingredients actually in the recipe.
What happens if declaration is missing or wrong?
Control is carried out by the cantons, and breaches of labelling rules are punishable, with fines of up to 40,000 francs. In order:
The cantons enforce the Foodstuffs Act (Art. 47 LMG, SR 817.0). Their enforcement bodies, among them the cantonal chemist, food inspectors and food controllers (Art. 49 LMG), inspect on a risk basis and, in doing so, also examine the business’s self-monitoring (Art. 30 LMG). Self-monitoring remains the duty of every business despite official control (Art. 26 LMG).
If the authority finds a defect, it issues a formal objection (Beanstandung, Art. 33 LMG) and orders measures (Art. 34 and 35 LMG); in the event of an immediate, serious health hazard, up to immediate closure of the business (Art. 35 para. 3 LMG). The control is normally free of charge; among the fee-liable cases are a control that leads to an objection and a follow-up control of a business (Art. 58 LMG).
In criminal terms: anyone who intentionally breaches labelling rules risks a fine of up to 40,000 francs (Art. 64 para. 1 let. j LMG), up to 80,000 francs where acting commercially or with intent to enrich, and up to 20,000 francs in cases of negligence. Anyone who places food on the market in such a way that it endangers health in normal use risks a custodial sentence of up to three years (Art. 63 LMG). Prosecution and judgment are a matter for the cantons (Art. 66 LMG); the amount in an individual case is determined by the cantonal proceedings.
This is not a scare tactic but the sober framework: the declaration duty is part of normal food control, and a missing or wrong allergen statement is a defect that any control can detect and document.
How do kitchens stay on top of it when recipes change?
Only with a system that carries changes through: whether iron manual discipline or software that does it automatically. The allergen matrix from the five-step workflow is correct on the day it is created. After that, the real problem begins.
An example: the supplier changes, and the new bouillon contains celery and barley extract. The bouillon sits in the vegetable stock, the stock in three sauces, the sauces in twelve dishes. Whoever maintains the matrix by hand has to work through this chain in full every time: with every recipe change, every product switch, every seasonal change of the menu. Nested recipes are the point at which manual maintenance breaks down: a sub-recipe changes in one place but affects every dish it is part of.
That is not just a housekeeping problem but a legal one: oral information only holds up if the information is available to staff in writing or a competent person can provide it immediately (Art. 5 para. 1 let. d LIV). An out-of-date document does not meet that.
What helps: keep recipes and product switches in a single place, and carry every change to a sub-recipe consistently through to all affected dishes. For simply converting portion sizes (which changes nothing about the allergens), we do have our free recipe scaler.
This nesting problem is exactly what we are building Trolevo for: recipes with nested sub-recipes whose allergens roll up automatically, from all ingredients and sub-recipes, into one allergen label per dish. Change the stock, and the label changes everywhere with it. This helps you meet the labelling duty; responsibility for correct information stays with the business. Trolevo is in development – get early access.
Sources
- LIV – FDHA Ordinance on Food Information, SR 817.022.16 (German, as of 1 July 2025)
- LGV – Foodstuffs and Utility Articles Ordinance, SR 817.02 (German, as of 1 July 2025)
- LMG – Foodstuffs Act, SR 817.0 (German, as of 1 October 2024)
- EU Regulation No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers (consolidated version)
- BLV – Information in loose sale (German)
- GastroSuisse – Allergenic foods (German)
- GastroSuisse – Declaration duty for bread and fine bakery goods (from 1 February 2025) (German)
- Graubünden Office for Food Safety and Animal Health – Leaflet on the labelling of food placed on the market loose (PDF) (German)
This article is general information, not legal advice. The binding texts are the statutes (LMG, LGV, LIV) and the information provided by the cantonal enforcement authorities.