Codex Alimentarius and U.S. Food Chemicals Codex consider several hexacyanoferrate compounds to be safe food additives. Accordingly, these and other approved anti-caking agents are routinely added to food grade salt to provide a free-flowing product demanded by food processors. Virtually the entire world accepts the safety of salt and foods containing hexacyanoferrate additives.
Food salt, whether served at the table or used in cooking or food processing, is rendered more useful and acceptable by treating it with free-flowing agents. In food processing, the principle additives are sodium hexacyanoferrate (II) decahydrate (also known as sodium ferrocyanide or yellow prussiate of soda or YPS) and potassium hexacyanoferrate (II) trihydrate (also known as potassium ferrocyanide or YPP). For simplicity, consider “YPS” to refer to both compounds. Much of the food salt produced in the Americas, Europe and Oceania uses YPS.
Japan, however, does not recognize a number of anti-caking agents that are commonly used in the salt industry worldwide. We are unaware of any attempt in Japan to expand its list of approved anti-caking compounds, and this issue was unlikely to have arisen before the recent and ongoing process of terminating Japan’s long-standing salt monopoly. In the past, Japan did not import food grade salt; with the end of its domestic salt monopoly, that situation is changing.
It is clear that salt imported into Japan for food uses should not use YPS as an anti-caking agent. Fortunately, many alternatives are readily available to salt manufacturers, including those approved for use in Japan. U.S. salt manufacturers use tricalcium phosphate and magnesium carbonate as the anti-caking agents for salt sold in Japan. This may impose higher costs on Japanese consumers and inflict performance penalties for Japanese food manufacturers, but complies fully with Japan’s limited list of approved food additives. Unfortunately for Chinese salt manufacturers who are anxious to expand into the Japanese market in the wake of the abolition of Japan’s salt monopoly, YPS is the only anti-caking agent approved in China, thus barring Chinese salt from the Japanese market.
The question has arisen whether salt containing YPS can be used to manufacture foods sold in Japan. It seems clear that foods incorporating salt containing hexacyanoferrate (II) compounds have been imported into Japan for many years. Worldwide, food manufacturers widely-use and prefer YPS and specify it in the salt they purchase for most products. YPS offers food processors a unique functionality. The presence of hexacyanoferrates in the final product is not, of course, an issue of health or safety, but could conceivably present a regulatory compliance concern in Japan.
YPS has been thoroughly tested and determined by world health authorities to be entirely safe for human consumption. Because Japan may not (yet) have considered expanding its list of authorized food additives can in no way be interpreted as finding fault with the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that have studied the safety of hexacyanoferrates and approved them for human consumption.
Issued: June 25, 2002
[About Salt Institute] [About salt] [About the salt industry] [News] [SI Member Business (password required] [E-Mail Salt Institute]