Regulation (EU) No 231/2012 laying down specifications for food additives
European Commission · European Union
What a substance must be to count as the additive that Regulation 1333/2008 permits: its definition, how it is made, what it must assay at, and the limits on lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium.
These specifications bind within the EU. JECFA publishes its own for many of the same substances, and where both exist this site shows them separately and compares the figures.
How it is arranged
- One entry per E number, in numerical order, each giving synonyms, definition, assay, description, identification, purity and, for colours, spectrometric data.
What this site takes from it
Every specification, with its fields, matched to the additive page it describes.
And what it does not
Nothing material; specifications for additives with no page here are held but not shown.
Provenance
- euspecs EU food additive specifications and Annex III (consolidated 02012R0231-20260818 and 02008R1333-20260818) — European Union (EUR-Lex). CC BY 4.0; retrieved 2026-10-18.
Recorded on Sources, generated from the provenance table so it cannot drift from what the site holds.
Read the instrument. Where a page here disagrees with it, the instrument is right and this site is wrong — check the retrieval date first.
Also for European Union: Regulation 1333/2008, Regulation 1169/2011.