Canada Restaurant Allergen Requirements 2026

Not by federal law. Health Canada's Enhanced Allergen Labelling Regulations (2012) require priority allergens to be declared in plain language on PREPACKAGED foods, but restaurant menus are not federally required to list allergens. However, provincial food safety regulations require food businesses to provide safe food and accurate information, and courts recognize a duty of care: if a guest asks about allergens, the answer must be right. In practice, written per-dish allergen information is the standard that inspectors, insurers and allergy organizations such as Food Allergy Canada expect.

Health Canada recognizes these priority food allergens: peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, fish, crustaceans and molluscs, sesame, soy, wheat and triticale, and mustard — plus added sulphites at 10 ppm or more, which must be declared in the same way. Note two differences from the US Top 9: Canada includes mustard and molluscs. All Canadian priority allergens are contained within the EU's 14-allergen list, which is the standard IAMenu detects automatically.

The EU requires allergen information for unpackaged food (restaurant menus) since 2014 — 14 allergens. The US federal list is 9 and, since July 2026, California requires them on menus for large chains. Canada sits in between: a broader list than the US (11 priority categories, including mustard and molluscs) but, like the pre-2026 US, no federal menu-labeling mandate for restaurants. For a restaurant serving international tourists, following the strictest standard (the EU 14) covers all three markets at once.

Yes. Under Quebec's Charter of the French Language (reinforced by Bill 96), menus and commercial documents must be available in French, and French must be at least as prominent as any other language. For restaurants this means every menu — and its allergen information — needs an accurate French version. IAMenu translates the full menu, including all allergen names, automatically: the same QR code serves French, English and 27 more languages, each with correctly translated allergen labels.

Sabrina's Law (Ontario, in force since 2006) was Canada's landmark anaphylaxis legislation, named after Sabrina Shannon, a 13-year-old who died from an anaphylactic reaction at school. It requires Ontario school boards to have anaphylaxis policies and staff training. While it applies to schools rather than restaurants, it transformed public awareness of food allergies in Canada — and set the expectation that food providers take allergen information seriously.

According to Food Allergy Canada, more than 3 million Canadians self-report at least one food allergy — including about 600,000 children — and roughly half of Canadian households are directly or indirectly affected. Food allergy is considered one of the fastest-growing food safety concerns in the country, which is why clear allergen information on menus is increasingly treated as a baseline expectation by guests, even where the law does not yet mandate it.

IAMenu's Super Chef AI automatically detects allergens for every dish using contextual analysis (dish name, ingredients, category). It is built on the EU's 14-allergen standard — a superset of Canada's priority list, so mustard, molluscs and sulphites are all covered, unlike systems built only for the US Top 9. Allergens are translated automatically into 29 languages including French (Quebec-ready), and every change to a recipe re-analyzes allergens in real time across your QR menu.

IAMenu plans start at $19/month (Starter), $39/month (Professional) and $69/month (Premium) — automatic AI allergen detection is included in ALL plans. Every account starts with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. For a bilingual market like Canada, the automatic French translation alone typically replaces hours of manual menu work every month.