50 records

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

50 records, one fact each. Every value is transcribed from the source that states it and carries the sentence it was taken from: 3 sources across 3 sites, last checked 2026-08-10, due for re-check by 2027-08-10. Every record is listed below, each linking the page its value came from.

About this data

US and EU food color additive listings, each taken from that jurisdiction's own regulation. A record is one color additive as one of the two regimes lists it: from 21 CFR Part 74 (US certified colors) its FD&C designation and food-use status, and from Regulation 1333/2008 Annex II (EU) its E-number, permitted or not-authorised status and Group classification. A record carries both jurisdictions only where a source states both; the two regulations do not cite each other, so most records today state one side and are silent on the other. Answers 'what is the EU status of Allura Red AC?' (E 129, Group III, food colours with a combined maximum limit), 'is titanium dioxide authorised as a food colour in the EU?' (no — E 171, not authorised), 'what is the US food-use status of FD&C Red No. 40?' (may be safely used for foods generally, GMP) and 'what happened to Orange B?' (FDA revoked the authorised food use, effective September 8, 2026). It does not yet put one colour's US and EU status on a single page — those are separate records — and it does not carry EU maximum levels by food category or the Southampton warning-label requirement.

The data

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.

• 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-74
• govinfo.govhttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-07-23/html/2026-14910.htm

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-color-additive-status-us-vs-eu color_additive="Allura red AC"

npx -y refsource lookup food-color-additive-status-us-vs-eu color_additive="Allura red AC"

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 color additive status in the US and the EU: FDA color additive listings and EU E-number authorisations", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `food-color-additive-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.

50 records. last verified against source 2026-08-10. due for re-check by 2027-08-10.

Licence. US federal regulations are government works, public domain. EU regulations as retained in UK law are published under Crown copyright with Open Government Licence. Facts (regulatory status, maximum levels) are not copyrightable in either jurisdiction.