Lead In Chocolate: What The UK Limits Actually Say
Great Britain sets no maximum level for lead in chocolate or cocoa. It does set them for cadmium, and has done since 1 January 2019. Both live in retained Commission Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006, which legislation.gov.uk maintains as the GB text.
The category rarely says this out loud. A pack that says "heavy metal tested" is telling you a test happened, not what the result was measured against,, and for lead in chocolate there is no number in GB law to measure it against. That gap is this page.
The cadmium limits that do exist
Cadmium maximum levels for cocoa and chocolate were added by Commission Regulation (EU) No 488/2014 and apply from 1 January 2019. They sit at point 3.2.7 of the Annex and are expressed in mg/kg wet weight.
| Category | Maximum level (mg/kg) |
|---|---|
| Milk chocolate with less than 30% total dry cocoa solids | 0.10 |
| Chocolate with less than 50% total dry cocoa solids; milk chocolate with 30% or more | 0.30 |
| Chocolate with 50% or more total dry cocoa solids | 0.80 |
| Cocoa powder sold to the final consumer, including sweetened drinking chocolate | 0.60 |
Read the table against a pack. A 70% bar and a 77% bar fall in the same row, the 0.80 mg/kg one, because the band is drawn at 50% and nothing above it is subdivided. A milk chocolate at 32% cocoa solids is held to 0.30 mg/kg. The law bands by cocoa content, not by how the product markets itself, and cocoa powder gets its own line at 0.60 mg/kg, which is a separate question again from what alkali treatment does to a powder.
Why lead in chocolate has no number
The lead table in the same Annex was rewritten by Commission Regulation (EU) 2015/1005. It is long: milk at 0.020 mg/kg, cereals and pulses at 0.20, most fruit and vegetables at 0.10, honey at 0.10, bivalve molluscs at 1.50, food supplements at 3.0. Nothing in it names cocoa, cocoa powder or chocolate.
Enforcement does not stop there. Article 2 of Regulation 1881/2006 covers foods that are "dried, diluted, processed or composed of more than one ingredient", and makes a business justify its concentration or dilution factors during an official control. If it does not, the authority sets the factor itself, "with the objective of maximum protection of human health".
Food Standards Scotland put the position plainly in a June 2025 freedom of information response: "Although the Regulations do not provide maximum limits for lead in cocoa and chocolate products", the Public Analysts compared the lead levels found against limits for comparable products and deemed them satisfactory. A comparison, not a threshold.
What UK and US testing has actually found
That same response is the most useful UK dataset in public, covering Local Authority sampling from 1 July 2013 to 19 May 2025. Thirty-one products described as dark chocolate were sampled, and all thirty-one met the cadmium maximum levels. Twenty-eight were tested for lead: eleven returned zero, the other seventeen ranged from 0.01 to 0.08 mg/kg.
The widely circulated American figures come from a different study with a different yardstick. Hands and colleagues, writing in Frontiers in Nutrition in 2024, analysed 72 cocoa-containing products bought in the United States across four cohorts in 2014, 2016, 2019 and 2022. They reported that 43% exceeded the California Proposition 65 maximum allowable dose level of 0.5 micrograms of lead per day, and 35% exceeded the 4.1 microgram cadmium level, while 70 of the 72 fell below the US FDA interim reference level for lead.
Two limitations matter. A Proposition 65 level is a daily-intake trigger for a warning label in one US state, not a food safety limit and not GB law. And the authors noted that median concentrations sat below even those conservative levels, which points to a few outlier products carrying the result rather than the category.
Where cadmium in cacao comes from
Cadmium arrives through the soil. Marincich and colleagues, in the EFSA Journal in 2023, state that the cocoa tree "is particularly effective in up taking Cd from soil", and that the content in the tree depends on how much cadmium the soil holds and on soil pH, which governs how available it is. They also note that cadmium concentrates in the shell rather than the nib, so the processing step where shells are removed is the one that matters most.
Their figures for chocolate bought in Warsaw give the scale: a median of 0.018 micrograms per gram for milk chocolate, 0.126 for bitter chocolate, against bands of 0.10 to 0.80 mg/kg. More cocoa, more cadmium, by a margin still well inside the limit. Because the route is agronomic, where a bean is grown is a sourcing question, not only a flavour one.
What is in a Chaski tube, and what this page will not tell you
Chaski Cacao is a 600 g tube of 77% dark buttons made with single-origin Peruvian and Ecuadorian cacao and coconut sugar, with Lion's Mane as a fruiting body extract and Cordyceps sinensis. No emulsifiers, no seed oils, no palm oil, no added cane sugar. The cacao is ground at low temperature, and every batch is tested for lead, cadmium and pesticides.
No batch figure appears on this page. A number from one batch is not a number for the tube in your cupboard, and we will not print one here that has not been re-verified against the batch you would receive. Ask for the current figures before you buy, and expect any brand that tests to answer within a working day. That is a fair test to apply to us too.
The wider category picture sits in our look at lead and cadmium in chocolate, and the rest of the library is indexed on the Chaski guides page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a legal limit for lead in chocolate in the UK?
No. The lead table in retained Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006, as rewritten by Commission Regulation (EU) 2015/1005, sets maximum levels for milk, cereals, vegetables, fruit, fish, honey, food supplements and other categories, but no entry names cocoa, cocoa powder or chocolate. Food Standards Scotland confirmed this in a June 2025 freedom of information response, adding that Public Analysts instead compared the levels they found against limits for comparable products. Cadmium in chocolate does have maximum levels.
What is the cadmium limit for 70% or 77% dark chocolate?
0.80 mg/kg wet weight. Point 3.2.7 of the Annex to retained Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 draws its band at 50% total dry cocoa solids, so every chocolate at or above that figure sits in the same row, whether it is 51% or 85%. Chocolate below 50%, and milk chocolate at 30% or more, is held to 0.30 mg/kg, and milk chocolate below 30% to 0.10 mg/kg. These levels were added by Commission Regulation (EU) No 488/2014 and apply from 1 January 2019.
Does a higher cocoa percentage mean more cadmium?
The measured figures point that way. Marincich and colleagues, in the EFSA Journal in 2023, reported a median cadmium concentration of 0.018 micrograms per gram in milk chocolate against 0.126 in bitter chocolate from the same shopping survey. That is consistent with cadmium being carried by the cocoa rather than by sugar or milk solids, and with the same authors noting that the cocoa tree takes up cadmium from soil. Both medians sit well below the maximum levels for their categories, and one survey in one city is not a general rule.
What does California Proposition 65 have to do with chocolate sold in Britain?
Nothing legally. Proposition 65 is a Californian warning-label law, and its maximum allowable dose levels of 0.5 micrograms a day for lead and 4.1 for cadmium are triggers for a notice on a pack, not food safety limits. They are far stricter than GB thresholds, which is why the 2024 Frontiers in Nutrition analysis of 72 American products reported that 43% exceeded the lead level while 70 of 72 sat below the US FDA interim reference level.
Does Chaski test for heavy metals?
Every batch is tested for lead, cadmium and pesticides. We have deliberately not printed a batch figure here, because a result from one batch is not a result for the tube you would receive. Ask for the current figures before you order. The tube is 600 g of 77% dark buttons made with single-origin Peruvian and Ecuadorian cacao and coconut sugar, with no emulsifiers, seed oils, palm oil or added cane sugar.
Sources
- Commission Regulation (EU) No 488/2014, legislation.gov.uk, 2014
- Commission Regulation (EU) 2015/1005, legislation.gov.uk, 2015
- Commission Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006, Article 2, legislation.gov.uk, 2006
- Food Standards Scotland, Freedom of Information response, 2025
- Hands JM, Anderson ML, Cooperman T, Balsky JE, Frame LA, Frontiers in Nutrition, 2024
- Marincich L, Protti M, Mandrioli R, Mercolini L, Wozniak L, EFSA Journal, 2023
See what is in the tube
Chaski Cacao — 600 g tube, 77% dark, every batch tested for lead, cadmium and pesticides