Toronto-based nutrition technology company introduces AI-powered allergen detection across Canadian, US, and UK regulations, giving chain restaurants the tool they need to comply with California's first-in-the-nation Allergen Disclosure for Dining Experiences Act (SB 68).

TORONTO, ON / ACCESS Newswire / June 1, 2026 / MenuSano, the nutrition analysis and labelling platform behind Ontario's 2015 Healthy Menu Choices Act, today announced the launch of AI Allergen Detection, the first artificial intelligence system that both auto-detects food allergens at the ingredient and sub-ingredient level.

The launch comes 30 days before California's Allergen Disclosure for Dining Experiences Act (Senate Bill 68) takes effect on July 1, 2026, requiring every food facility with 20 or more locations operating in California to disclose nine major food allergens on every menu item. California is the first state in the nation to mandate menu allergen disclosure. Approximately 4 million Californians live with food allergies.

Undeclared allergens are now the leading cause of food recalls in North America. In 2024, undeclared allergens accounted for 34% of all FDA recalls in the United States and 27% of all CFIA recalls in Canada, according to public regulatory data. That is one allergen-related recall every three days.

'For the operators we serve, allergen compliance is no longer a matter of reading labels carefully,' said Sonia Couto, Founder of MenuSano. 'It is a matter of life and death for some of their customers, and now in California, it is a matter of legal compliance with serious enforcement consequences. AI Allergen Detector was built to handle both.'

HOW THE AI AUTO ALLERGEN WORKS

AI allergen detector scans every ingredient, sub-ingredient, recipe, sub-recipe, combined recipe, and custom ingredient in a MenuSano account against a centralized allergen database curated from CFIA, FDA, FSIS, Food Allergy Canada, the UK Food Standards Agency, and Allergy UK. The system flags every detected allergen and displays it visually with country-specific iconography.

The system covers:

• Canada's 12 priority allergens (CFIA)

• The United States' 9 major allergens (FDA, including sesame as added by FASTER Act)

• The United Kingdom's 14 main allergens (FSA)

For chain restaurants subject to SB 68, this means a single platform that detects all 9 California-required allergens automatically and produces compliant menu disclosures.

WHAT MAKES MENUSANO'S AI ALLERGEN DIFFERENT

While several allergen management tools exist for the food industry, MenuSano's AI Allergen Detector is the first to combine three capabilities in a single platform:

1. AI-powered detection at the ingredient AND sub-ingredient level. The system reads complex recipes and identifies allergens in nested ingredients automatically.

2. AI-detection. When an allergen is detected, the system alerts and displays the allergen on the nutrition labels automatically.

3. Multi-jurisdiction compliance from one recipe. A single MenuSano recipe generates compliant labels and disclosures for FDA, CFIA, and FSA simultaneously, with country-specific allergen rules applied automatically.

AI allergen detector also integrates with MenuSano's existing manual allergen toggles, allowing operators to override AI predictions when they have ground-truth knowledge that the system does not, with a clear visual legend distinguishing AI-detected allergens (blue), manually-detected allergens (green), and overrides (highlighted with a question mark).

WHY THIS LAUNCH MATTERS

For California chain restaurants, the AI allergen detector provides a path to SB 68 compliance with 30 days to spare before the July 1 deadline.

For hospital and healthcare foodservice operators, including the more than 20 hospitals in Eastern Ontario's Champlain Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Network that already use MenuSano, Allergens AI adds a second layer of patient safety on top of clinical nutrition workflows.

For independent food manufacturers and bakeries, including more than 500 named MenuSano customers across Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the AI allergen detector replaces the manual cross-checking of allergens against ingredient databases with automated, AI-driven analysis.

'We helped operators comply with Ontario's menu labelling law in 2015. We helped Toronto Public Health build the Savvy Diner pilot that contributed to that law in the first place,' said Couto. 'Today, we are doing the same for California's allergen disclosure law. That is the work that matters to us.'

ABOUT MENUSANO

MenuSano is a Toronto-based nutrition analysis and labelling platform founded by Sonia Couto, a breast cancer survivor whose diagnosis catalyzed a focus on food transparency as a public health imperative. MenuSano produces FDA-compliant, CFIA-compliant, and FSA-compliant nutrition labels, recipe costing, and now AI-powered allergen detection for customers in 30+ countries, including Shake Shack, Pizza Nova, Nando's Canada, Priester's Pecans, Fossil Farms, the University of Guelph, the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, and the Champlain Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Network. MenuSano is part of the Konverge Group of companies.

Allergens AI is available June 1st on the MenuSano platform as an add-on to all MenuSano subscription tiers. It is included in our enterprise package. Pricing is published at menusano.com/pricing. A 7-day free trial of MenuSano is available.

Sonia Couto
Founder, MenuSano
[email protected]
Tel: 1-866-640-2345

SOURCE: MenuSano