Food additives in Great Britain

Food Standards Agency / Food Standards Scotland

Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales — kept the EU regime as assimilated law after leaving the European Union, and has since diverged from it in two ways: the EU has amended its Annex II and Great Britain has not followed every change, and since 1 April 2025 Great Britain authorises additives by a different procedure.

The authoritative list is now the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland Register of Food Additive Authorisations. S.I. 2025/361 removed Annex II from the assimilated regulation for Great Britain and saved the authorisations it carried, so the register says what is authorised while the conditions of use remain those of Annex II as it stood on 28 June 2024 — frozen, while the EU's text keeps moving. Where the FSA has reissued an authorisation since, its own conditions replace that frozen text.

Northern Ireland is not covered here: it applies the EU list.

What this index holds

394 of the 1189 substances on this site carry a Great Britain entry, across 18,003 provisions. Last retrieved 2026-10-18 from Great Britain food additive authorisations (FSA/FSS register; assimilated Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, Annex II as at 28 June 2024), under Open Government Licence v3.0. Conditions are given by food category, using the great britain food categories of assimilated Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, Annex II, Part D, as at 28 June 2024.

392 permitted, with conditions
2 permitted

What is read, and what is not

Read:

The FSA/FSS register of authorisations, including which of the three nations each covers.
Annex II to the assimilated regulation as at 28 June 2024, for conditions of use, and the register's own conditions where an authorisation has been reissued.

Not read:

Northern Ireland, which follows the EU row.
Flavourings, enzymes, processing aids and nutrients, as in the EU.

What an empty row means

A page with no Great Britain row means the site matched no authorisation on the register. As in the EU, the list is closed, so that usually means it may not be used as a food additive — with the same caveats about substances regulated under other instruments.

The instruments

Elsewhere

Compare Great Britain with another regulator on the comparison pages, or read how the whole index is built in the method.