# Cochineal (Dactylopius coccus)

**Grana*, *coccinella**

**Known today as.** The dried insect *Dactylopius coccus*, a parasite of the prickly-pear cactus of Mexico and South America.

Kind: Animal

## What was it used for?

Of good use in medicine, Pomet says, but used far more by the dyers for scarlet, and to colour sugar.

## What does modern science say?

The source of carmine red (E120), still used in food and cosmetics.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **carminic acid**: 

**Mechanism.** The pigment is harmless to most; the proteins carried over from the insect cause allergy and, rarely, anaphylaxis.

**Dose.** Anaphylaxis and urticaria after foods coloured with carmine are recorded.

**Standing.** A permitted food colour (E120) that must be declared by name on the labels of foods and cosmetics in the United States since January 2011, for the allergic.

## What lore surrounds it?

Its nature puzzled Europe: most, Cartwright writes, took the grains for a worm bred from a rotting berry, and Pomet held them the seed of a plant, until the microscope work of Nicolaas Hartsoeker in 1694 and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1704. Mesoamerican cultivators had long since domesticated it, painting its eggs onto the pads of wild cacti with fox-hair brushes, and the Spanish enlarged the trade on great plantations after the conquest.

## What did the older authorities say?

**New Spain.** Cultivated by the Aztecs, it was by the eighteenth century second only to silver among the exports of Spanish America, outshining the old [kermes](https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/kermes).

## Sources

- World History Encyclopedia, on cochineal.
- Pomet, P. (1712). *A Compleat History of Druggs*. London: Bonwicke et al.
- Food and Drug Administration (2009). Listing of color additives exempt from certification; food, drug, and cosmetic labeling: cochineal extract and carmine declaration. Final rule. *Federal Register* 74 (2): 207–217.
- Chung, K., et al. (2001). “Identification of carmine allergens among three carmine allergy patients.” *Allergy* 56.

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*Cochineal.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/cochineal

Historical description, not medical advice.