Carmoisine is an azo dye widely used in many industries, and therefore frequently occurs in the effluent of many factories. To our knowledge, biological degradation of carmoisine has received little attention. The present study investigates the capability of Saccharomyces cerevisiae ATCC 9763 for degradation of carmoisine. Spectrophotometry data indicates that carmoisine (50 mg/l) was eliminated from the aqueous medium after approximately 7 h of incubation with Saccharomyces under anaerobic shaking conditions. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) revealed the removal of carmoisine as well as the appearance of aromatic amines in samples collected from the decolourized medium by S. cerevisiae and this was subsequently confirmed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC/MS) was carried out on 'fractions from consecutive column chromatography and two-dimensional (2D) chromatography. LC/MS indicated degradation of carmoisine into its constituent aromatic amines. In addition, investigating the effect of environmental conditions on the decolourization process indicated that yeast extract could positively affect decolourization rates; shaking significantly accelerated decolourization and shortened the time required for complete biodecolourization from similar or equal to 8 days to similar or equal to 7 h; and Saccharomyces was able to consume sucrose as a carbon source and remove the carmoisine despite the presence of sunset yellow, which remained unaffected.