Attività

Food additives are chemicals added to foods to keep them fresh or to enhance their colour, flavour or texture. They may include food colourings (such as tartrazine or cochineal), flavour enhancers (such as MSG) or a range of preservatives.

Safety tests for food additives

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is responsible for the approval of which food additives are allowed in Australian foods. All food additives used in Australia undergo a safety assessment, which includes rigorous testing before they are approved.Toxicological tests on animals are used to determine the amount of the additive that is expected to be safe when consumed by humans. This is usually an amount 100 times less than the maximum daily dose at which ‘no observable effects’ are produced by an additive consumed over the test animal’s lifetime.If there is any doubt over the safety of an additive, approval is not given. If new scientific information becomes available suggesting that a food additive is no longer safe, the approval to use the food additive would be withdrawn.