Shellac, bleached

E number E904INS 904CAS 9000-59-3

Used as a glazing agent.

Shellac is the glaze on many sweets, chocolate coatings and coated fruit, and the coating on many tablets. It is a resin secreted by the lac insect and is not vegan; whether it is vegetarian is contested, because insects are killed during harvesting.

Where it is and isn’t permitted

Status of Shellac, bleached by jurisdiction. Every jurisdiction this site covers is listed, including those where the substance does not appear.
Jurisdiction	Status	Scope and limits	Citation
United StatesFood and Drug Administration	Not listedDoes not appear on this jurisdiction’s permitted list. That is not the same as being prohibited.
Codex AlimentariusCodex Alimentarius Commission / JECFA	Permitted, with conditions	11 food categories no numerical limit (good manufacturing practice) Show every food category 04.1.1.2 Surface-treated fresh fruit — GMP 04.2.1.2 Surface-treated fresh vegetables, (including mushrooms and fungi, roots and tubers, pulses and legumes, and aloe vera), seaweeds and nuts and seeds — GMP 05.1.4 Cocoa and chocolate products — GMP 05.1.5 Imitation chocolate, chocolate substitute products — GMP 05.2 Confectionery including hard and soft candy, nougats, etc. other than food categories 05.1, 05.3, and 05.4 — GMP 05.3 Chewing gum — GMP 05.4 Decorations (e.g. for fine bakery wares), toppings (non-fruit), and sweet sauces — GMP 07.2 Fine bakery wares (sweet, salty, savoury) and mixes — GMP 13.6 Food supplements — GMP 14.1.5 Coffee, coffee substitutes, tea, herbal infusions, and other hot cereal and grain beverages, excluding cocoa — GMP 15.0 Ready-to-eat savouries — GMP	CXS 192-1995 Table One, INS 904and 10 further provisionsretrieved 2026-09-07

What it is made from

Scraped from tree branches as the secretion of the lac insect, Kerria lacca, in India and Thailand, then washed, filtered and bleached. Insect fragments are removed during refining but the raw material is an insect product.

Not vegan
Not vegetarian
May raise a halal question
May raise a kosher question

CAS registry number: 9000-59-3

Every name it appears under

9 recorded names. A label may use any of them.

E number

E904

INS number

CAS registry number

9000-59-3

Other names

Bleached shellac
E 904
Shellac
SHELLAC, BLEACHED
White shellac

Systematic names

7-acetyl-6-ethyl-3,5,8-trihydroxy-9,10-dioxo-9,10-dihydroanthracene-1,2-dicarboxylic acid

Hazard reference values

Values set by assessing bodies. A body that has not set a value is not listed here.
Type	Value	Population	Assessed by	Opinion
ADI	4 mg/kg bw/day	consumers	EFSA	not identified in the dataset

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

gsfa 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/shellac-bleached.json