Codex Gsfa MCP server

@pipeworx/codex-gsfa

The FAO/WHO Codex General Standard for Food Additives (GSFA, CXS 192-1995) — which food additives may be used in which foods, at what maximum level, under which conditions.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1576+ live data sources.

Tools

Two kinds of permission

GSFA grants use in two structurally different ways, and every provision returned says which one it came from:

level, either numeric (10,000 mg/kg) or GMP, usually conditioned by numbered notes.

• Table 1 & 2 (provisiontable: "table12") — a specific maximum use

good manufacturing practice with no numeric limit.

• Table 3 (provision_table: "table3") — the additive is permitted under

For methyl cellulose that is 17 Table 1/2 provisions against 61 Table 3 ones. Treating them as one thing either invents limits the standard does not set or hides most of where an additive is actually allowed.

Subcategory inheritance

A GSFA provision applies to the food category named and all of its subcategories — a provision on 01.4 also governs 01.4.4. Lookups walk up the numbering and report inheritedfromparent plus matchedfoodcategory, because "permitted at this level for this exact food" and "permitted because its parent category is" are different answers.

permitted: false means the standard lists no provision. That is not the same as an explicit prohibition, and the response says so rather than implying a ban.

Notes are part of the answer

Provisions are frequently qualified by numbered notes — "for use in ready-to-drink products only", "as sulphur dioxide", "on the fat basis" — and a maximum level is not fully specified without them. 2,590 of 15,377 provisions carry one.

Note text is inlined on every provision (notes: [{id, text}]), not left as a bare id, because an id with no text invites a caller to read the level and stop. gsfa_notes resolves ids directly or searches note wording.

The text is scraped from the note icon's tooltip on each additive page, so it carries the same Codex session as the additive it qualifies. All 468 cited note ids resolve.

Auth

None. The dataset ships inside the pack.

Freshness

Every additive result carries cacsession, cacyear, and snapshotdate. Records come from archived snapshots of GSFA Online, so individual additives can lag the newest Codex session — gsfacoverage reports which sessions are present and which additive ids could not be retrieved at all (entries whose every archived snapshot is one of FAO's own error pages).

Regenerate with:

node --experimental-strip-types scripts/ingest-gsfa.ts

Data sources

Cloudflare managed challenge; we read Internet Archive snapshots instead — see docs/codex-gsfa-plan.md for the route and the freshness plan)

• Codex GSFA Online — (FAO fronts this with a

data —

• Codex Alimentarius CXS 192-1995 —
• JECFA specifications and evaluations, which GSFA links to for toxicological

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.