European Regulations For Multilayer Food Contact Materials, 2005 European PLACE Conference

Articles and facilities which come into contact with food are subject to special demands. This applies to processing and also to transport and warehousing of food. These articles are requested to not influence the food they contact, neither toxicologically i. e. no health threat for the end-user, nor may they change the composition of the food and the properties like smell, taste and look. Most materials that come into contact with foodstuffs consist of different parts or components, which together form an article, eg, a package. Often adhesive is used for holding together the parts. In a multi-layer package, those layers not in direct contact with foodstuff may not be neglected, because their constituents may migrate through the food-contact layer. While there are already European regulations for plastics, for other components like printing inks or adhesives a preparation is intensively discussed. The establishment of a positive-list system for those components will require very much time and money and this surely cannot be accomplished for all formulation components used today. Thus in the future a number of formulations may no longer be legal for food contact materials. A positive-list system absolutely requires an individual compliance check with specific migration limits. It has to be considered that conventional migration test processes are time-consuming and costly and that there are no analytical methods for many components yet. As a consequence the only possible and useful way is a specific testing concept by a combination of extraction and migration tests and mathematical modelling, that guarantees the safe use of these components in multilayer food contact materials, and which can be utilized cost-efficiently by the industry, especially by small and medium-sized enterprises.