The ingredient list

May contain, and its four conditions

Updated October 2026

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What it permits The first route, which is simple The second route, which has four conditions And two more That third condition is the restrictive one It only ever covers color additives Assortments get their own provision References

The line on the back of every palette, and it is a narrow allowance with four conditions.

What it permits

A declaration of ingredients may include an ingredient not in the product if the ingredient is identified by the phrase "may contain" and one of two routes is satisfied. That is a genuine departure from declaring what is in the package.

The first route, which is simple

It is a color additive added to some batches of the product for purposes of color matching. So batch-to-batch shade correction is covered directly, with no further conditions.

The second route, which has four conditions

The same declaration is also used for other products similar in composition and intended for the same use, including assortments. The products are shaded products within the categories at 21 CFR 720.4(c)(3), (7) and (8)(v).

And two more

All products sharing the common declaration are sold by the labeler under a common trade name or brand designation, and no trade name or brand designation not common to all of them appears in the labeling of any of them. And the ingredient is a color additive.

That third condition is the restrictive one

A shade range sold under one brand name qualifies. A range where one shade carries a collaboration name or a sub-brand does not, because a non-common designation appears on it. Limited editions are where this breaks.

It only ever covers color additives

Both routes end with that. A preservative or an active present in some variants and not others cannot be handled with "may contain", and that is a common misreading.

Assortments get their own provision

Where an assortment of cosmetic products is sold together in the same package, the color additives may be declared in a single composite list in a manner that is not misleading and that indicates what it is. That is the palette provision.

References

21 CFR 701.3(g) and (h), which permit a declaration to include an ingredient not in the product where it is identified by the phrase "may contain" and it is a color additive added to some batches for color matching, or where four stated conditions about shaded products sold under a common trade name are met; and which permit an assortment sold in one package to declare its color additives in a single composite list. law.cornell.edu

21 CFR 701.3(f), the alternative to strict descending order: ingredients other than color additives above 1 percent in descending order, then those at not more than 1 percent without respect to order, then color additives without respect to order of predominance. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal regulation and from measured catalog data, not from a formulation bench. Whether a given color additive is listed for a given use, including use in the area of the eye, is a question about that listing in 21 CFR parts 73, 74 and 82. Nothing here is a determination about a specific colorant.