Article 1

Council Directive 88/388/EEC of 22 June 1988 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to flavourings for use in foodstuffs and to source materials for their production · European Union

1. This Directive shall apply to 'flavourings' used or intended for use in or on foodstuffs to impart odour and/or taste, and to source materials used for the production of flavourings. 2. For the purposes of this Directive: 'flavouring' means flavouring substances, flavouring preparations, process flavourings, smoke flavourings or mixtures thereof; 'flavouring substance' means a defined chemical substance with flavouring properties which is obtained: by appropriate physical processes (including distillation and solvent extraction) or enzymatic or microbiological processes from material of vegetable or animal origin either in the raw state or after processing for human consumption by traditional food-preparation processes (including drying, torrefaction and fermentation), by chemical synthesis or isolated by chemical processes and which is chemically identical to a substance naturally present in material of vegetable or animal origin as described in (i), by chemical synthesis but which is not chemically identical to a substance naturally present in material of vegetable or animal origin as described in (i); 'flavouring preparation' means a product, other than the substances defined in (b) (i), whether concentrated or not, with flavouring properties, which is obtained by appropriate physical processes (including distillation and solvent extraction) or by enzymatic or microbiological processes from material of vegetable or animal origin, either in the raw state or after processing for human consumption by traditional food-preparation processes (including drying, torrefaction and fermentation); 'process flavouring' means a product which is obtained according to good manufacturing practices by heating to a temperature not exceeding 180°C for a period not exceeding 15 minutes a mixture of ingredients, not necessarily themselves having flavouring properties, of which at least one contains nitrogen (amino) and another is a reducing sugar; 'smoke flavouring' means a smoke extract used in traditional foodstuffs smoking processes. 3. Flavourings may contain foodstuffs as well as other substances as described in Article 6 (1).

← preamble_23 · All articles · 1. →

Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-08 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.