FoodGuard
Can I legally sell this food here, and what does the science say? Codex additive permissions and residue limits, the FAO/WHO safety evaluations underneath them, US 21 CFR text and UK establishment ratings — the sources a regulatory-affairs or QA team cites, not consumer nutrition data.
Included Packs
Codex GSFA — which additives are permitted in which food category, at what maximum level, and under which notes. Distinguishes a numeric limit from Good Manufacturing Practice, and says when a permission was inherited from a parent food category rather than stated outright
Codex maximum residue limits for pesticides and veterinary drugs, searchable by substance or by the food itself — the ceilings a shipment is rejected against at a border, with the adoption year and step code that says whether a limit is binding yet
JECFA acceptable daily intakes for additives, contaminants and veterinary drugs, and JMPR intakes for pesticides — the committee’s conclusions, the meeting that set each value, and links to the source reports
21 CFR — the actual regulation text behind a US food requirement, retrieved by citation or searched by phrase
Food Standards Agency hygiene ratings for a named business or across an authority — supplier due diligence on the UK side
A permission, a residue ceiling and the toxicology behind both, in one scope. Codex revoked chlorpyrifos’s residue limits, so the limits database has no record of it — JMPR still holds the evaluation that says why
Common questions
What question is this vertical for?
Whether a product can legally be sold in a market, and what the science behind the rule says. It is scoped for regulatory-affairs and QA teams at exporters, importers and manufacturers — not consumer nutrition. Codex GSFA answers "may I add this additive, and how much"; the residue limits answer "how much pesticide or veterinary drug residue is tolerated in this food"; JECFA and JMPR answer "what did the FAO/WHO experts conclude, and when".
Are Codex limits the law in my country?
No, and the tools do not claim otherwise. Codex standards are the internationally agreed reference that national regulators and the WTO use as the benchmark, and many countries adopt them directly — but the binding text is whatever your own regulator published. Use the Codex packs for the international position and fda-regulations for the actual US requirement. A residue limit also carries its step code: CXL means adopted, while a numeric step means it is still moving through the eight-step procedure and is not binding yet.
A substance is missing from the residue limits. Does that mean it is banned?
No — and this is the single easiest way to get a wrong answer here. The Codex residue database lists only CURRENTLY adopted limits and removes entries when Codex revokes them, so an absent substance may have been evaluated for decades. Chlorpyrifos is the worked example: it is absent from the limits database because its limits were revoked, while JMPR still holds its evaluation, including the 2024 conclusion that the toxicological database was insufficient to set a health-based guidance value. The tools say which kind of absence they found rather than returning an empty result.
What does an empty Acceptable Daily Intake mean?
Usually the opposite of safe. JECFA and JMPR record substances with no ADI because the committee declined to set one, and the reason sits in the comments on that same evaluation — chloramphenicol carries no maximum residue limit at all because Codex judges no residue level acceptable. The packs surface that as an explicit note rather than as missing data.
How current is the data?
The Codex additive permissions are stamped with the Commission session they came from, and every residue limit carries its adoption year and the JMPR or JECFA evaluation year behind it. The FAO and WHO databases are read live on each call, so a newly adopted limit appears as soon as they publish it.