Allergens courses and guidance

Seafood business operators must ensure that staff receive appropriate allergens training. Find out what training and guidance is available.

Fish and chips on a bio box tray with a wooden fork and a pot of mushy peas
Fish and chips with a portion of homemade mushy peas

Food Allergens Management training

Course overview

Seafish has developed a one day remotely delivered training programme for food businesses to help them manage allergens during processing and production.

This management level, highly participative training programme, incorporates much of the guidance from the Food Standards Agency and is delivered by two Seafish trainers with experience of food manufacturing and the management of allergens in a food production and processing environment.

This programme is available for delivery, subject to demand.

To register your interest in this training course, please email the onshore raining team using the contact page below.

The one-day course will cost £200 per person, UK seafood businesses are eligible for 50% funding support.

The online invigilated exam consists of 20 multiple-choice questions and five extended answer questions.

This training course leads to a Seafish/Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland (REHIS) joint award.

Course Content

  • Understanding allergens.
  • Legislation and external scrutiny.
  • The recognised allergens.
  • Applying HACCP to allergens management.
  • Allergen control plans.
  • Supplier approval specifications.
  • Preventing cross contamination.
  • Managing the allergens list.
  • Training.
  • Traceability and recall.
  • Prerequisites.

We suggest that learners attending the course have a food hygiene and HACCP qualification or significant experience of HACCP in a food production environment. We suggest completion of these two programmes: Elementary Food Hygiene and Elementary HACCP.

Allergy awareness training for food handlers in customer facing businesses

Regulations require that food businesses keep and provide appropriate information on allergen content. You must also have controls in place to control them in order to protect their customers and therefore their business.

Your staff should:

  • know the procedures when asked to provide allergen information.
  • be trained to accurately handle allergen information requests.
  • be able to guarantee that allergen-free meals are served to the right customer.
  • know the risks of allergen cross-contamination when handling and preparing foods and how to prevent this.

Since October 2021 foods which are prepacked for direct sale to the consumer must be labelled with any genic ingredients. Follow the link to find out more about allergen labelling.

Allergy awareness training for food handlers

Allergy awareness training for food handlers is available from Allergy Action UK which offers an allergens awareness half day training course. We can arrange for this training to be delivered by one of our approved trainers who has extensive seafood industry experience and is an approved trainer for Allergy Action UK.

To register your interest in this allergens awareness course please email our onshore training team using the contact page below.

The Food Standards Agency provide free online training to businesses. Follow the link to their website for more information.

See also:

Elementary Food Hygiene

Elementary HACCP

Allergens guidance for businesses - from the Food Standards Agency