In January 2019, the French Minister of Economy and Finance reaffirmed his will to ban titanium dioxide (E171), in accordance with the Government’s position and the provisions voted by Parliament in Article 53 of the French law on food published on 1 November 2018.

In order to gather the necessary legal conditions for this ban, he therefore asked ANSES (French scientific evaluation agency) to accelerate its work on nanoparticles for the TiO2 by 15 April, in order to update its previous evaluation based on new available studies.

On the basis of this ANSES report, the French Government wishes to publish, where appropriate, an order as early as April 2019 on a suspension of the placing on the market of foods containing titanium dioxide.

Concretely, for the moment you can continue to put on the market in France your products (foodstuffs including food supplements) which currently contain titanium dioxide, however we recommend to study as soon as possible reformulation solutions to change this additive, in order to be ready in the event that this ban in France would be confirmed by the publication of an order in the French Official Journal.