referencesource/food-additive-approval-status-us-vs-eu

Food additive regulatory approval status — US FDA vs EU

Canonical, always-current version: https://referencesource.org/food-additive-approval-status-us-vs-eu/ Machine-readable: https://referencesource.org/food-additive-approval-status-us-vs-eu/data.json — this mirror is a point-in-time copy.

• —Last verified: 2026-08-18
• —Stale after: 2027-08-18 (past this date, prefer the canonical copy — it re-verifies on a cadence this snapshot does not)
• —Records: 479

Cross-jurisdictional regulatory status of food additives permitted for direct addition to food. Each record is one additive with its approval status in both the US (FDA, 21 CFR Parts 172–178) and the EU (Regulation 1333/2008, Annex II). Covers whether the substance is permitted, prohibited, or conditionally restricted in each jurisdiction, with the regulatory citation and any concentration limits or use conditions. Answers 'is titanium dioxide allowed in food in the EU' (no, banned since August 2022), 'is potassium bromate permitted in the US' (yes, 21 CFR 172.730), 'which food additives are approved in the US but banned in the EU', and 'what is the E-number for sodium nitrite' (E250). The divergences are the product: BHA, BHT, TBHQ, titanium dioxide, potassium bromate, and azodicarbonamide all have different regulatory status between the US and EU, and an assistant that states one jurisdiction's position as universal is wrong for the other.

Provenance — what every record carries

Every record carries source (the URL the value was read from) and source_quote (a verbatim quote from that page stating it). A value you cannot check against its page is indistinguishable from an invented one; these can all be checked. Each record is also individually addressable on the canonical site at its url.

Licence position

US FDA regulations are US Government works, not copyrightable. EUR-Lex content is reusable under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU. Facts are not copyrightable (Feist, 1991); each record quotes a short attributed span and links back.

Facts are not copyrightable; what this dataset takes from each source is a fact plus a short attributed quote linking back to the page that states it.

Sources

• —https://web.archive.org/web/20260704113047/https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A02008R1333-20260218
• —https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-172
• —https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-172/subpart-B

Fields

See any record in data/records.jsonl — field names are self-describing, and the canonical page for each record renders them with labels: https://referencesource.org/food-additive-approval-status-us-vs-eu/