Corn endosperm oil

Corn endosperm oil is a feed colour: it is fed to chickens so that the yolks and skin turn yellow. It does not colour food directly — the bird does.

Where it is and isn’t permitted

Status of Corn endosperm oil by jurisdiction. Every jurisdiction this site covers is listed, including those where the substance does not appear.
JurisdictionStatusScope and limitsCitation
United StatesFood and Drug AdministrationPermitted21 CFR 73.315retrieved 2026-09-07
Codex AlimentariusCodex Alimentarius Commission / JECFANot listedDoes not appear on this jurisdiction’s permitted list. That is not the same as being prohibited.

What it is made from

Extracted from maize during wet milling, carrying the xanthophyll pigments the bird deposits in fat and yolk.

  • Vegan
  • Vegetarian

Every name it appears under

1 recorded name. A label may use any of them.

As it appears in regulation

  • Corn endosperm oil

Hazard reference values

No reference value for this substance in the sources we hold.

Evidence and how bodies read it

Studies, and the differing conclusions regulators drew from them, are curated by hand rather than machine-read, and none has been written for this substance yet.

Sources for this page

  • ecfr retrieved 2026-09-07

Full licence terms and publisher details on Sources. How this page is built and updated: Method.

Machine-readable:/api/v1/additives/corn-endosperm-oil.json