According to European Parliament and Council Directives 94/35/EC, 94/36/EC and 95/2/EC on food additives, the Member States shall establish a monitoring system for the consumption of food additives. The objective is to monitor food additive consumption and to ensure that their use does not exceed the acceptable daily intake (ADI) set for additives by the Scientific Committee on Food (SCF).
This report represents a first attempt to obtain an overview of the dietary food additive intake in the European Union. Even if the results must be regarded as a very preliminary indication on the dietary intake of food additives, they indicate that the intake of the majority of food additives permitted today in the European Union is below the acceptable daily intake (ADI) set by the Scientific Committee on Food.
This report has many limitations. Food consumption data used was insufficient to estimate accurately food additive intake leading to worst case assumptions and consequent over-estimations of intake. Also several Member States did not use the agreed methodology for estimation of additive intake, leading to lack of comparability of the collected data. This highlights the need for Member States to apply the agreed, harmonised methodology to ensure consistency of approach and to allocate adequate resources for all future intake estimations. The current study should then be repeated and a new report should be drawn up within three years from now.