In 2012, Decernis took on the challenge of building a comprehensive global food additive database, covering 144 countries. Decernis worked intensely with key clients and governmental regulatory agencies to build a database which enables making 'valid where sold' determinations for complex product formulations across covered countries.  Building this system required collecting regulations regarding food standards and food additives from 90+ countries, followed by contacting governments in over 50 other countries which did not have regulations of their own to discover whether those countries follow other national, regional or international food additive regimes. It required building complex algorithms to calculate where regulations require summing groups of additives or require one substance to have a limit expressed as another substance. The result is a system which can check individual additives or additives in formulations against specified usages and functions for specified countries and determine what, if any, regulatory thresholds exist.

Challenges in creation of global food additive database

245th National Meeting (2013)

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