Permitted and prohibited colours in fresh eggs

The colour of the yolk gives consumers the impression that it is an egg from organic farming. Eggs with a yellow-orange hue are the most sought after, so egg producers enhance the colour of their products by feeding laying hens food containing different colours (natural or synthetic). There are eight colourants registered as poultry feed additives. Among them, only canthaxanthin has been proven to have a negative effect on human health (retinopathy) and for this reason, in 2007, the European Food Safety Agency established the maximum residue limit for canthaxanthin as 30 mg/kg egg yolk.

However, there are a number of colours approved for use in commercial food production (Commission Regulation (EU) No. 1333/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on food additives), but they are prohibited in eggs, and only eggshell decoration is allowed. Unfortunately, there are also reports of food adulteration using unauthorized food and feed dyes, which are often very dangerous. Such is the case of using sudan colouring in eggs. The amount of sudan IV was detected in chicken eggs in 2006 in China at a concentration of 300 μg/kg. For example, dyes such as: sudan red G, sudan red 7B, sudan red B, sudan orange G, toluidine red, rhodamine B, orange II, para-red, which are also considered carcinogenic to humans and are prohibited as additives in food, have also been detected in food in the European Union.

Sudan dyes belong to the group of industrial dyes, stable under the conditions in which food is prepared, but in the human body they can be enzymatically transferred into carcinogenic aromatic amines (sudan I and III - aniline, sudan II - 2,4 - dimethylaniline, sudan IV - o -toluidine, para-Red - p-nitroaniline). Sudan I is genotoxic, but data on the toxic effects of other sudan dyes have not been fully found.

As peppers are relatively often adulterated with illegal dyes, there is concern about unintentional contamination of eggs with adulterated dyes.

Currently, as the environmental awareness among consumers grows, the enhancement of egg yolk colour with natural xanthophylls extracted from plants is becoming more and more popular in poultry nutrition.

The Sample Control laboratory has accredited the method of determining prohibited sudan dyes in food as well as the method of determining food dyes (allura red AC, azorubin, brilliant black BN, brilliant blue FCF, indigo carmine, caramel, carmine, quinoline yellow, curcumin, sunset yellow, tartrazine, green S).

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