Does India's food-safety framework lag its major trading partners on additive safety, or does it apply a different evidentiary threshold before acting? Reviewed against primary regulatory records, the evidence splits three ways rather than one. On titanium dioxide and on synthetic-dye labelling, India's standards trail the European Union's precautionary approach by a documented, still-open margin. On potassium bromate and brominated vegetable oil, the record runs the other way: India's food regulator acted years ahead of the United States. And on Rhodamine B, the additive most associated with the “still legal in India” claim, the framing is inaccurate — the dye was never on India's approved list, and the 2024 state-level bans closed an enforcement gap at the retail level, not a regulatory one.

Where the Gap Is Real: Titanium Dioxide (E171)

The European Commission withdrew authorisation for titanium dioxide (E171) as a food additive in January 2022, with a full market ban from 7 August 2022, after the European Food Safety Authority concluded in May 2021 that it could not rule out a genotoxicity concern and could not therefore establish a safe daily intake level.[4,5]

India's Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011 continue to list titanium dioxide as a Good Manufacturing Practice colouring agent, permitted at the lowest level necessary to achieve its effect, with no pending FSSAI review identified as of this writing.[6]

The international position is split rather than uniform: the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives has not set a numerical Acceptable Daily Intake for titanium dioxide, treating it as acceptable under Codex's General Standard for Food Additives.[7] This is the sharpest documented case in this review of India's standard diverging specifically from the EU's, rather than from a global consensus.

Where India Moved First: Potassium Bromate and Brominated Vegetable Oil

FSSAI issued its gazette notification prohibiting potassium bromate as a food additive in September 2016, following a Centre for Science and Environment study that found residues in commercially sold bread, and reiterated in February 2018 that no circumstance permits its use.[1]

The United States has not followed: potassium bromate remains permitted under federal rules, and California's Assembly Bill 418 — the first US state action against the additive, signed in October 2023 — does not take effect until January 1, 2027.[2] Brominated vegetable oil follows a similar pattern. India prohibited it in 1990, well ahead of the US federal ban, which the FDA finalised only in July 2024, effective that August.[3]

On these two additives, the comparative record favours India's timeline over the United States', not the reverse.

Warning Label, Not a Ban: Synthetic Dyes and the Tartrazine Question

Tartrazine and five related synthetic colours — the group sometimes called the “Southampton Six” — are not banned in the European Union. Since July 2010, EU rules under Regulation 1333/2008 require any food containing them to carry a label stating the colour “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children,” following a 2007 University of Southampton study.[8] The European Food Safety Authority's own 2009 opinions on these same colours concluded that the available data did not substantiate a causal link between the individual dyes and behavioural effects in children — the warning label was adopted as a precautionary measure that went beyond what EFSA's scientific review had established.[9]

India's Food Safety and Standards Regulations permit tartrazine and related synthetic colours within prescribed limits and carry no equivalent warning-label requirement. On the US side, the FDA's January 2025 action revoked authorisation only for Red No. 3, taking effect in 2027; it left Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5 (tartrazine), and other dyes untouched.[10]

The clearest, most defensible gap here is procedural — the absence of an EU-style consumer warning label in India — rather than a question of whether the underlying additive is permitted at all, since the US permits the same dyes without that label too.

The Spice Export Case: Ethylene Oxide

Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety announced on 5 April 2024 that it had detected ethylene oxide, classified by IARC as a Group 1 carcinogen, in three MDH products and one Everest product; the Singapore Food Agency separately ordered a recall of Everest's Fish Curry Masala the same month, citing levels exceeding its permissible limit.[11,12,13]

India's Spices Board had already mandated ethylene oxide testing for EU-bound consignments from January 2022, following earlier EU findings; it extended mandatory pre-shipment testing to Hong Kong- and Singapore-bound consignments from 7 May 2024, after the two regulators' findings became public.[14]

The sequence is instructive: India's testing regime for this contaminant has so far expanded reactively, market by market, in response to importing-country action, rather than through a single proactive domestic standard applied uniformly to all export destinations.

The Rhodamine B Correction

Rhodamine B does not appear on FSSAI's list of approved synthetic food colours under the 2011 additive regulations — it was never a permitted additive to begin with, in India or elsewhere in the food-safety sense.[15]

The 2024 actions against it — Karnataka's order prohibiting artificial colours including Rhodamine B in cotton candy and gobi manchurian, and Tamil Nadu's parallel prohibition — were state-level enforcement actions against an already-unauthorised substance found in street food, not new bans on a previously legal ingredient.[16,17]

Framing Rhodamine B as an additive that was “legal in India” until recently misstates the regulatory record; the accurate description is a persistent enforcement gap at the point of sale.

“What the evidence does not establish is a single coherent narrative in either direction: the gaps run both ways, and much of the underlying disagreement between regulators is about how much scientific uncertainty is acceptable before acting, not about a settled question of harm that only India has ignored.”

Counter-Evidence

Two findings complicate the framing that additive restrictions abroad reflect settled proof of harm that India has failed to act on. First, EFSA's own scientific opinions on the Southampton Six dyes found no substantiated causal link to hyperactivity, yet the European Commission mandated warning labels regardless — precaution operating ahead of, not strictly derived from, the underlying science.[8,9] Second, the United States is not a consistent benchmark either: it permits potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil (until 2024), and the Southampton Six dyes without EU-style warning labels, meaning India's specific shortfall is relative to EU standards rather than to a uniform global consensus that India alone has failed to meet.[2,3,10]

What the Evidence Establishes

The additives reviewed here support a narrower and more mixed claim than the general "India lags the world on food safety" framing that circulates around each new headline. India's standards trail the European Union specifically on titanium dioxide and on synthetic-dye warning labelling. India matched or led the United States' timeline on potassium bromate and brominated vegetable oil. At least one of the most widely cited "still legal in India" examples, Rhodamine B, was never a legal additive to begin with. And the ethylene oxide episode shows an export-testing regime that has so far expanded market by market in response to importing-country findings, rather than through one proactive domestic standard.

Endnotes

  • Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), “FSSAI restricts use of potassium bromate as additives in food products,” notice hosted on fssai.gov.in, 21 February 2018, referencing the Gazette Notification of September 2016.

  • Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, signing statement for Assembly Bill 418 (California Food Safety Act), gov.ca.gov, 7 October 2023; effective 1 January 2027.

  • U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO),” fda.gov; Federal Register, “Revocation of Authorization for Use of Brominated Vegetable Oil in Food,” 3 July 2024, effective 2 August 2024. UK ban 1970; India ban 1990, per FDA/CSPI regulatory history summaries.

  • European Commission, Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/63 of 14 January 2022 amending Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 as regards the food additive titanium dioxide (E171); in force 7 February 2022, full market withdrawal 7 August 2022.

  • European Food Safety Authority, “Titanium dioxide: E171 no longer considered safe when used as a food additive,” scientific opinion, 6 May 2021.

  • FSSAI, Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011, Chapter 3 — Substances Added to Food, fssai.gov.in.

  • Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), 97th meeting, 2023; Codex General Standard for Food Additives (GSFA), Table 3, titanium dioxide (INS 171).

  • European Commission, Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, Article 24 and Annex V; Food Safety Authority of Ireland, labelling-requirements guidance on the six colours affected, effective 20 July 2010.

  • European Food Safety Authority, scientific opinions on Quinoline Yellow (E104), Sunset Yellow FCF (E110), Ponceau 4R (E124), Tartrazine (E102), Azorubine/Carmoisine (E122), and Allura Red AC (E129), 2009.

  • U.S. Food and Drug Administration order revoking authorisation of FD&C Red No. 3; published in the Federal Register, 90 Fed. Reg. 4628, 16 January 2025, effective 15 January 2027 for food.

  • Centre for Food Safety, Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, statement on ethylene oxide detected in MDH and Everest spice products, 5 April 2024.

  • Singapore Food Agency, recall notice for Everest Fish Curry Masala citing ethylene oxide levels exceeding the permissible limit, April 2024.

  • International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classification of ethylene oxide as a Group 1 carcinogen.

  • Spices Board of India, Export Support System circulars: mandatory ethylene oxide testing for EU-bound consignments effective 6 January 2022, and for Hong Kong- and Singapore-bound consignments effective 7 May 2024, indianspices.org.in.

  • FSSAI, Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011 — list of FSSAI-approved synthetic food colours; Rhodamine B is not among them.

  • Dr. Harishwara, Joint Commissioner for Food, Karnataka, statement on the state order prohibiting artificial colours including Rhodamine B in cotton candy and gobi manchurian, 11 March 2024, as reported by Scroll.in.

  • Ma Subramanian, Health Minister, Government of Tamil Nadu, statement on the prohibition of Rhodamine B as a food additive under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, February 2024.