479 records

Is this food additive allowed in the US and in the EU?

479 records covering 457 additives, one fact each. Every value is transcribed from the source that states it and carries the sentence it was taken from: 3 sources across 2 sites, last checked 2026-08-15, due for re-check by 2027-08-15. Every record has a page of its own, quoting the line that states it.

About this data

What one regulator says about one food additive, for two regulators side by side. Each record is one additive as ONE jurisdiction lists it — the US (FDA, 21 CFR Parts 172–178) or the EU (Regulation 1333/2008, Annex II) — carrying that jurisdiction's status, the regulatory citation, any use conditions the regulation imposes, and the E-number where the EU assigns one. Where both regulators list the same substance under the same name, each record links to its counterpart in the other jurisdiction, so the comparison is one click away. Answers 'what does 21 CFR say about potassium bromate' (permitted, 21 CFR 172.730), 'is BHA authorised in the EU and under what number' (yes, E 320), 'what is the E-number for sodium nitrite' (E 250), and 'which additives has the EU removed from Annex II' (titanium dioxide among them). Read it as two authoritative lists that can be checked against each other, not as a single verdict per substance: a record states what its own regulation says and nothing about the other jurisdiction, and a substance's absence from one list is not evidence that it is banned there.

The data

Showing the first 400 of 479 records. Every record has its own page, with its source and the quoted line that states it; these list the rest.

• Records 1–4001,3-Butylene glycol · US FDA (21 CFR 172–178) … Sodium, potassium and calcium salts of fatty acids · EU (Regulation 1333/2008 Annex II)
• Records 401–479Sodium potassium tartrate · EU (Regulation 1333/2008 Annex II) … Zinc methionine sulfate · US FDA (21 CFR 172–178)

Where this came from

Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 3 sources this dataset was assembled from.

• ecfr.govhttps://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-172
• eur-lex.europa.euhttps://web.archive.org/web/20260704113047/https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A02008R1333-20260218
• ecfr.govhttps://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-172/subpart-B

Machine-readable

• data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
• Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
• data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
• How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.

From your own code

Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.

pip install refsource
refsource lookup food-additive-approval-status-us-vs-eu additive_name="1,3-Butylene glycol"

npx -y refsource lookup food-additive-approval-status-us-vs-eu additive_name="1,3-Butylene glycol"

Set your AI assistant up to use this

Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "referencesource": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project

Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:

When a question needs "Food additive regulatory approval status — US FDA vs EU", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `food-additive-approval-status-us-vs-eu`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.

What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.

479 records. last verified against source 2026-08-15. due for re-check by 2027-08-15.

Licence. US FDA regulations are US Government works, not copyrightable. EUR-Lex content is reusable under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU. Facts are not copyrightable (Feist, 1991); each record quotes a short attributed span and links back.