The EU and Canada
Food additives permitted in one and not the other — and what each gap actually means.
221 additives are permitted in both. 177 are permitted in the EU with no permission in Canada, none of them explicitly prohibited there. 169 are permitted in Canada with no permission in the EU, of which 1 is explicitly prohibited or removed there.
A missing permission is rarely a ban. Usually no one has applied, the substance is named or grouped differently, or it falls under a different law. Only the first two groups below — prohibited, and removed — record a regulator’s decision against a substance, and even those are decisions about legal status, not findings this site draws about safety.
Permitted in the EU, no permission in Canada
No Canadian listing matched 177
Health Canada’s lists name additives without E or INS numbers, so this site matches them by exact name. A substance listed in Canada under a name this site does not recognise will appear here. Treat these as unconfirmed, not as absent.
Permitted in Canada, no permission in the EU
Removed from the EU’s list 1
The EU once permitted these and has removed them. The date and the instrument are on each additive’s page.
| Additive | Function | In Canada | In European Union |
|---|---|---|---|
| Titanium dioxide E171 | Colour | 4 provisions | Removed with effect from 7 February 2022. Instrument |
Possibly covered by a related listing in the EU 2
The EU lists a substance under the same number — often a group entry such as “E 322 Lecithins” where the other regulator lists a single form. This site cannot tell whether that listing covers this form, so these are not counted as absent.
| Additive | Function | In Canada | In European Union |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magnesium phosphate INS 343(iii) | Acidity regulator | 1 provision | Magnesium dihydrogen phosphate, Magnesium hydrogen phosphate, Magnesium phosphates (E343) |
| Quillaia extract type 2 INS 999(ii) | Emulsifier | 4 provisions | Quillaia extract (E999) |
Regulated outside the additives list in the EU 5
Every function regulators give these — flavouring, enzyme, nutrient, solvent or processing aid — is one the EU regulates under separate rules, so they would not be expected on its list of food additives. Their absence here says nothing about whether the EU permits them.
| Additive | Function | In Canada |
|---|---|---|
| Caffeine | Flavouring agent | 2 provisions |
| Copper sulfate | Nutrient supplement | 2 provisions |
| Ethanol denatured with methanol | Solvent | 1 provision |
| Ethyl methyl ketone | Flavouring agent | 1 provision |
| Hexane | Solvent | 5 provisions |
Not on the EU’s list 161
The EU permits food additives only where it lists them, and these are not listed. That is not a finding against the substance: usually no one has applied for authorisation there. It does mean they may not be used as food additives in the EU today.
What this page is not
It is not a list of unsafe additives, and a regulator permitting something is not this site’s endorsement of it. Regulators reach different decisions on the same evidence, on different applications, and at different times. Each additive’s page shows every jurisdiction’s status with its citation, and where an assessing body has published a reading of the evidence, that reading, attributed.
Counts are of this site’s additive pages, which follow the regulators’ own listings: a group entry in one jurisdiction can correspond to several pages in another. Status as retrieved from each source; see Sources for dates.