Annex I of Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 October 2004 on materials and articles intended to come into contact with food runs to a single page.
It is a list. Seventeen items. Active and intelligent materials. Adhesives. Ceramics. Cork. Rubbers. Glass. Ion-exchange resins. Metals and alloys. Paper and board. Plastics. Printing inks. Regenerated cellulose. Silicones. Textiles. Varnishes and coatings. Waxes. Wood.1
Seventeen categories. Every material that could touch food, named. The list is comprehensive. It is the kind of list that ends an argument — if someone asks "what about metals?" or "what about silicones?", you point to the Annex. It's there. Listed. Covered.
Read the list again. Metals. Silicones. Coatings. Wood. Every material in your kitchen is there. You feel reassured. That reassurance — that quiet settling — is the subject of this report.
The question a consumer cannot currently answer: how many of those seventeen categories have specific safety limits — migration limits, testing protocols, authorised substance lists?
The Number
Four.
Plastics have Commission Regulation (EU) No 10/2011: over a thousand substances with individual specific migration limits, an overall migration limit of 10 mg/dm2, standardised food simulants (3% acetic acid, 10% ethanol, olive oil, water), testing conditions defined in Annex V, and mandatory compliance declarations.2 This is what regulation looks like when it exists. A manufacturer of a plastic food container knows exactly which substances are permitted, at what concentrations, tested under what conditions, with what documentation.
Ceramics have Directive 84/500/EEC, which sets migration limits for two substances: lead and cadmium.3 Two. From glazed ceramics specifically. Regenerated cellulose has Directive 2007/42/EC.4 Active and intelligent materials have EC 450/2009.5
That is the complete list of specific EU measures for food contact materials, adopted under the framework that Article 5 of Regulation 1935/2004 provides for. Four categories. Twenty-two years after the framework was adopted.
The remaining thirteen — adhesives, cork, rubbers, glass, ion-exchange resins, metals and alloys, paper and board, printing inks, silicones, textiles, varnishes and coatings, waxes, and wood — operate under Article 3 alone. Article 3 is the general safety requirement: materials shall not transfer constituents to food "in quantities which could endanger human health" or "bring about an unacceptable change in the composition of the food."1
No specific migration limits. No standardised testing protocols. No authorised substance lists. No mandatory compliance declarations.
Article 3 is not a suggestion. It is legally binding. It applies to all seventeen categories. But consider what it means in practice for a manufacturer of metal cookware: you must not endanger health. How much nickel migration is too much? The regulation does not say. What test should you run to check? The regulation does not specify. What food simulant, at what temperature, for how long? The regulation is silent.
For plastics, the Commission answered these questions across hundreds of pages. For metals, it has been silent for twenty-two years.
The Kitchen
Open a kitchen cupboard.
A stainless steel saucepan — metals and alloys. Category 8. No specific EU measures.
A wooden spoon, finished with mineral oil — wood. Category 17. No specific EU measures.
A silicone spatula — silicones. Category 13. No specific EU measures.
A frying pan with a "ceramic" nonstick coating — that coating is a sol-gel hybrid: a silica matrix with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS, a silicone polymer) as the functional nonstick agent, and titanium dioxide nanoparticles for opacity.6,7 It is marketed as ceramic but is not fired clay. It is functionally silicone-based but is not classified as silicone. It contains inorganic components but is not classified as ceramic under Directive 84/500/EEC, which covers only lead and cadmium from glazed ceramics. Under which of the seventeen categories does a sol-gel coating fall?
Varnishes and coatings. Category 15. No specific EU measures.
Or silicones. Category 13. No specific EU measures.
Or plastics. Category 10. Specific measures exist — but EU 10/2011 was designed for plastic materials, and whether a sol-gel organic-inorganic hybrid falls within its scope is a classification question that has not been formally resolved. No manufacturer or regulator has been identified as having sought a definitive classification for sol-gel nonstick coatings under any specific FCM category.8
The coating sits between categories. Between categories means between regulatory frameworks. Between regulatory frameworks means under the general safety requirement alone — the same requirement that the Commission deemed insufficient for plastics.
The materials a household touches to food every day — the pan, the spoon, the spatula, the coating — are in the thirteen.
The Temperature
Even for plastics — the one kitchen-adjacent category with specific measures — the testing regime reveals what regulation looks like when it tries.
EU 10/2011 Annex V defines standardised migration test conditions across a range of temperatures.2 For aqueous food simulants — 3% acetic acid, 10% ethanol, water — migration tests are conducted at or below 100°C (reflux conditions). Above 100°C, the regulation switches to vegetable oil as the food simulant, with test temperatures up to 175°C, 200°C, and 225°C for worst-foreseeable-use scenarios. The high-temperature regime exists, but it tests oil-mediated migration. The food matrices that drive acid-mediated metal leaching — tomato sauce, wine, citrus, vinegar — are aqueous. For aqueous chemistry, the testing ceiling is the boiling point.
A frying pan reaches 175-190°C. Searing: 200-260°C. Stir-frying: 250-300°C or higher. An empty pan left on a high burner exceeds 300°C in minutes.9
This matters because acid-mediated leaching is the primary mechanism for metal migration from cookware. Tomato sauce in a stainless steel pan is aqueous acid chemistry. The plastics regulation tests aqueous simulants at up to 100°C — reasonable for plastic packaging, irrelevant for a metal pan at cooking temperatures.
For metals and alloys — which have no specific EU measures — there is not even a test to point to, adequate or otherwise. The most-cited study on metal migration from cookware, Kamerud et al. (2013) in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, tested stainless steel leaching at 85°C — simmering temperature.10 They found nickel migration of 483 µg per 126g serving from a new grade 316 pan, declining to 88 µg per serving after ten uses. Chromium increased up to seven-fold after six hours of contact with tomato sauce.
Nobody has published migration data at frying temperatures. Not because the study would be difficult, but because no regulatory standard requires it. The Arrhenius equation — a foundational principle of chemistry, not a speculation — predicts that chemical reaction rates approximately double for every 10°C increase in temperature.11 A process measured at 85°C behaves in a fundamentally different way at 200°C. How different? The study that would answer that question does not exist, because the standard that would mandate it does not exist.
The testing architecture was designed for food packaging. Cookware was brought under the same framework without adapting the testing conditions. A pan on a hob is not a plastic tray in a microwave. The regulation treats them as if they are.
The Suggestion
The gap is not invisible. The Council of Europe saw it.
In 2020, the Committee of Ministers adopted Resolution CM/Res(2020)9 on metals and alloys used in food contact materials.12 In August 2024, the European Directorate for Quality of Medicines and HealthCare (EDQM) published the second edition of a Technical Guide supplementing the resolution, setting Specific Release Limits for metals including nickel (0.14 mg/kg food), chromium III (1.0 mg/kg), aluminium (5.0 mg/kg), and manganese (0.55 mg/kg).13
The Kamerud finding of 88 µg nickel per 126g serving translates to 0.698 mg/kg food. That is five times the Council of Europe's own nickel guideline of 0.14 mg/kg.10,13 A stainless steel pan cooking tomato sauce would exceed the Council of Europe's recommended limit by a factor of five — under simmering conditions that are gentler than how most people actually cook.
A pan that exceeds the guideline by five times is legally compliant under EU law.
Because the guideline is not EU law. The Council of Europe is not an EU institution. Its resolution is not binding on EU member states. The Technical Guide states that it provides a framework that "enforcement officers may apply" and that "national policy makers can rely on."13 May. Can. Not must.
Member states are free to adopt the Specific Release Limits into national law. Some have. Italy has binding metal migration limits under DM 21/03/1973, a national decree that predates the EU framework itself.14 Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) publishes recommendations that German industry treats as de facto standards, even though they carry no legal force.15 France has DGCCRF guidance for metals and wood.16
The result is what the European Parliament's own 2016 implementation assessment described: "A substance might be forbidden in one Member State, authorised under certain limits and conditions in another, or not be regulated at all in a third one."17
The framework regulation was designed to harmonise the internal market. Twenty-two years later, non-plastic food contact materials are governed by a patchwork of national rules, non-binding guidance, and regulatory silence — exactly the fragmentation the framework was supposed to prevent.
The Twenty Years
The gap has a history. It is not a history of neglect. It is a history of acknowledgement without action.
Regulation 1935/2004 adopted. Annex I lists seventeen material groups. Article 5 provides the mechanism for adopting specific measures. No deadline set.1
Commission Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 adopted for plastics.2 Plastics become the fourth category with specific measures. Thirteen categories remain without. The framework has been in force for seven years.
The European Parliament commissions an implementation assessment. The European Parliamentary Research Service finds that "the lack of specific measures at EU level for some food contact materials/articles negatively impacts the functioning of the internal market" and recommends harmonisation.17 The assessment is published. No legislative proposal follows.
The Farm to Fork Strategy, a centrepiece of the European Green Deal, commits to revising EU rules on food contact materials. In December, the Commission publishes an inception impact assessment — a roadmap for revision.18 The commitment is made at the highest political level. No proposal is tabled.
A public consultation on FCM revision runs from October 2022 to January 2023. The Commission's own evaluation concludes that the framework is "only partially effective, with gaps in enforcement, control of NIAS and harmonisation."19 The consultation closes. No proposal follows within the expected timeframe.
The Council of Europe publishes the second edition of its Technical Guide on metals and alloys.13 Non-binding guidance, updated. Not EU legislation.
March 2026. The European Parliament publishes a briefing titled "Food contact materials in the EU: State of play." It confirms that materials including "paper, inks, coatings, rubber, metal, etc." still "rely mostly on national rules, leading to regulatory fragmentation, uneven safety standards and unclear requirements for industry." The Commission has "recently reiterated its commitment" to revision.20
Twenty-two years. Five cycles of acknowledgement. Each produced documentation: an assessment, a strategy, a consultation, an evaluation, a briefing. Each acknowledged the gap. None produced binding specific measures for any of the thirteen unharmonised categories.
The counter-argument is straightforward: the Commission is working on it. The revision is coming. Farm to Fork gave it political backing. The 2022 consultation gathered over five hundred responses. This cycle is different.
Perhaps. But the pattern predicts exactly this: perpetual commitment without specific measures. The framework's existence creates the institutional presumption that the listed materials are being addressed. Each cycle of acknowledgement reinforces the presumption — the Commission is aware, the Commission is working, the materials are listed. The urgency to actually adopt binding limits dissipates because the framework absorbs it. The commitment to revise IS the outcome. The reiteration IS the presumption.
If this cycle produces binding specific measures for metals, coatings, silicones, and wood, this analysis will have been overtaken by events. But the structural pattern — twenty-two years, five cycles, zero binding measures for thirteen categories — is the evidence, and it stands until the next cycle produces something the previous five did not.
The Classification
There is a gap within the gap.
The "ceramic" nonstick coating on a consumer's frying pan is a sol-gel material: silica nanoparticles in a matrix with PDMS (a silicone polymer) providing the nonstick function and titanium dioxide nanoparticles providing opacity.6,7 The nonstick mechanism is silicone — PDMS has a surface energy of 19-21 Dyne/cm, nearly identical to PTFE's 18 Dyne/cm.6 The American Ceramic Society has described these coatings as "quasi-ceramic," noting that sol-gel processing temperatures (200-425°C) are far below true ceramic processing temperatures (1,000°C or higher) and that proprietary formulations may contain "organic polymers with varying toxicity."21
The regulatory consequence: Directive 84/500/EEC applies to glazed ceramics and covers only lead and cadmium migration.3 A sol-gel coating is not a glazed ceramic. EU 10/2011 applies to plastic materials.2 A sol-gel coating contains inorganic components. Category 13 (silicones) has no specific measures. Category 15 (varnishes and coatings) has no specific measures.
The coating is simultaneously ceramic (by marketing name), silicone (by functional chemistry), plastic (by some definitions of polymer coating), and none of them (by regulatory classification). It exists in a classification void — not excluded from the framework, but not specifically included in any category that has specific measures.
The NIST study by Ntim et al. (2018) measured release of titanium dioxide nanoparticles (median diameter 250 nm) from "ceramic" nonstick cookware at concentrations of 108 particles per dm2 under simulated consumer scratching conditions.22 Golja et al. (2017) measured titanium migration from sol-gel coatings at up to 861 µg/L in food simulant.23
This investigation continues below.
Want the next one in your inbox?
In 2021, the European Food Safety Authority concluded that titanium dioxide (E171) "can no longer be considered safe as a food additive," leading to an EU ban on E171 in food effective 2022.24 The ban applies to titanium dioxide intentionally added to food. It does not apply to titanium dioxide released from a cookware coating into food during cooking — because cookware coatings are governed by the food contact materials framework, not the food additives framework. And the food contact materials framework has no specific measures for coatings.
The same substance the EU banned from food can migrate from a pan into food, under a framework that has no specific measures for the material releasing it.
The Defence
The gap persists. It is also leveraged.
The Cookware Sustainability Alliance (CSA), formed in 2024 by Meyer Corporation and Groupe SEB (€8.27 billion revenue, among the world's largest cookware manufacturers), has lobbied against PFAS legislation that would cover PTFE cookware coatings in multiple US states.25,26 California's SB 682 was vetoed by Governor Newsom on October 13, 2025, after CSA opposition. CSA president Steve Burns told C&EN that "no state has done this since last June — June of 2024, which was when we as the cookware industry began speaking up."25
CSA did not create the 4-of-17 gap. The gap existed for twenty years before CSA was founded. But CSA illustrates how the gap functions as infrastructure. When industry argues against additional cookware regulation, the argument available is that existing regulatory frameworks already address cookware safety — all seventeen categories listed. The framework's comprehensiveness in naming supports that argument. Its selectivity in governing undermines it. But the selectivity is visible only to those who count the implementing regulations.
The gap does not require active maintenance. It persists because the framework absorbs the pressure to close it.
The Exception
One jurisdiction went around the framework.
California Assembly Bill 1200, effective January 1, 2023 for website disclosure and January 1, 2024 for product labels, requires cookware manufacturers to disclose all intentionally added chemicals that appear on California's designated chemical list. The law restricts "free of" marketing claims: a manufacturer cannot claim a product is "free of" a specific chemical if any chemical from the same hazardous family is intentionally present.27
One state, in one country. Disclosure requirements that no EU member state, no EU regulation, and no US federal regulation provides for cookware.
AB 1200 did not emerge from the food contact materials framework. It was standalone state legislation that bypassed the framework entirely. This is what the Enumeration Presumption predicts: jurisdictions that break through do so outside the framework, because the framework's existence prevents action within it. California did not amend the existing system. California went around it.
The Design
Seventeen categories. Four with specific measures. Thirteen without. Twenty-two years.
The framework does not fail to list the materials. It lists them meticulously — every material that could contact food, named and categorised. The framework does not fail to provide for specific measures — Article 5 creates the mechanism. The framework does not fail to set a general safety requirement — Article 3 is legally binding.
The framework fails to convert its own comprehensiveness into specific protection. And its comprehensiveness in naming prevents the recognition that specific protection is absent.
This is the Enumeration Presumption. It operates through three conditions.
First: comprehensive naming. The framework lists all seventeen material groups. A consumer, a legislator, or an enforcement officer encountering the regulation sees a comprehensive list. Every kitchen material is there. The coverage looks complete.
Second: selective implementation. Specific measures are adopted for four categories. The selection is invisible from the framework's surface — Article 5 provides equally for specific measures across all seventeen groups. The gap between what is listed and what is governed is not signalled in the regulation's structure.
Third: presumptive closure. The framework's comprehensiveness in naming closes the perceived gap. The materials are listed. The general safety requirement applies. The Commission has recently reiterated its commitment to revision. The institutional and public assumption is that the listed materials are being addressed. The urgency to adopt specific measures — the urgency that produced EU 10/2011 for plastics — dissipates because the framework absorbs it.
You felt it at the top. The list — all seventeen categories, every kitchen material named — and the settling that followed. The regulation covers metals. It covers silicones. It covers coatings. It covers wood. Of course it does. You read the list. The coverage is comprehensive.
That settling is the Enumeration Presumption. The list did what it was designed to do — it created the feeling of coverage where the substance of coverage is absent. Seventeen names. Four laws. Thirteen silences. And the feeling that all seventeen are governed, because all seventeen are named.
Somebody built a list so thorough that nobody thought to check whether the list was also a law. The naming is the engineering — because once a material is named in a framework, the institutional assumption is that it is governed. The thirteen-category gap between "named" and "governed" is where the pan sits, the spoon sits, the spatula sits, the coating sits. That takes a certain craft.
The Levers
The gap has a shape. A shape can be addressed.
What specific measures require, in practice: Migration limits for identified substances. Standardised testing conditions that reflect actual use (cooking temperatures, not packaging temperatures). Food simulants appropriate to the cooking context (acidic foods, oils, extended contact times). Compliance declarations. An authorised substance list. This is what EU 10/2011 provides for plastics. The model exists.
What disclosure requires, in practice: AB 1200 demonstrates feasibility. A requirement to disclose intentionally added chemicals in cookware coatings, with restrictions on "free of" claims, is legislatively achievable. California enacted it. No technical barrier prevented it from being enacted twenty years ago.
What classification requires, in practice: Sol-gel "ceramic" coatings need a regulatory home. Formal classification under an existing category — or creation of a new one — would subject these coatings to specific measures, if those measures existed for the relevant category. Classification without specific measures changes nothing.
What testing at cooking temperatures requires, in practice: Migration studies at 175-260°C for metals and coatings. The Arrhenius principle predicts that leaching rates at frying temperatures are orders of magnitude higher than at 85-95°C. The prediction is testable. The test has not been conducted because no standard mandates it.
The consumer's lever: the question itself. Four of seventeen. Say the number. The number is the beginning of the conversation that the framework's design has prevented.
What Would Change This Analysis
This analysis identifies a structural gap in EU food contact materials regulation — the absence of specific measures for thirteen of seventeen listed material categories. The following developments would materially alter the conclusion:
If the European Commission adopts specific measures for metals and alloys under Regulation 1935/2004 — the 4-of-17 gap narrows. As of March 2026, no legislative proposal has been adopted despite twenty-two years of the framework's existence, a 2016 European Parliament implementation assessment recommending action, a 2020 Farm to Fork Strategy commitment, and a 2022 public consultation.17,18,19,20 If the current revision cycle produces binding specific measures, the Enumeration Presumption's prediction of structural inaction would be falsified for this domain.
If the Council of Europe Technical Guide becomes legally binding — through uniform adoption by EU member states or through incorporation into EU legislation — the metals gap would close in practice. The guide's Specific Release Limits provide the substantive content. What is absent is the legal force.
If peer-reviewed migration studies at cooking temperatures (175-260°C) demonstrate that metal leaching remains within safe limits — the temperature gap argument weakens. Currently, no study has measured metal migration at frying temperatures. The Arrhenius prediction of elevated leaching rates is a physical principle, not a measurement. Measurement could confirm or refute it.