A method for the determination of carminic acid in food using ultra high performance liquid chromatography had been developed.The sample was extracted by HCl in boring water bath,cleaned and enriched by polyamide SPE cartridge under acidic condition,eluted by ammonia/methanol solvent and determined by UPLC-UV.The separation column was used with Waters BEH C18(1.7 μm,2.1×100 mm).The detection limit was 0.2 mg/kg.The recoveries ranged from 89.2% to 100.6% with five food samples,the relative standard deviation...