It is an old practice for food producers to colour their products to make them look more attractive to consumers. Also egg yolks are coloured to give them an appealing appearance. Owing to highly developed trade within the European Union countries, regulations for the usage of food dyes have been harmonized and the risks of harmful effects of some of these substances have been re-evaluated. In some countries of the European Union even dyes that have been approved as food additives are subjected to special surveillance or banned. Some additives are mutagenic and carcinogenic, and therefore their presence in food (including food of animal origin) is deemed unsafe. Illegal use of industrial dyes to colour egg yolks destined for human consumption has led to the development of accurate analytical methods for their detection. This paper includes, among others, a review of procedures applied for preparing samples for chromatographic analysis by methods published over the last ten years which are used to determine banned dyes and canthaxanthin in eggs. The health risk to consumers from the presence of industrial dyes in eggs makes it necessary to monitor their occurrence in eggs and egg products, as well as to include them in the Polish “National control programme for prohibited substances and the residues of chemical, biological, and veterinary medicinal products in live animals and animal products”.
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