FSA: New food packaging guide published
The Food Standards Agency has published a new guide aimed at businesses involved in food packaging and at those bodies that enforce the rules governing such businesses.
The guide will help companies that, in the course of their business, manufacture or use materials and articles intended to come into contact with food. It also applies to those that could be brought into contact with food or that could be the source of chemical migration into food. These materials and articles include food packaging, processing and serving equipment, kitchen utensils, tableware and patio-ware, cooking pots and pans.
Target companies include material and article manufacturers, their raw material suppliers (such as those that supply polymer resins), material recyclers, converters, packers and fillers, importers and sellers on the market prior to the point of retail sale.
The advice is also relevant to environmental and port health and trading standards officers involved in the enforcement of the law governing chemical migration from these materials and articles.
The guide is for those that operate in the United Kingdom, and refers to parallel legislation in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where appropriate. It addresses:
• the legal requirements of Regulation (EC) No. 1935/2004 on chemical migration from all materials and articles in contact with food in relation to business documentation as it is required in conjunction with Regulation (EC) No. 2023/2006 on good manufacturing practice
• particular requirements in specific EU measures enacted in legislation across the UK dealing with declarations of compliance as they apply to the materials that are the subject of those measures
• good business practice
The guide has been developed with feedback from a workshop for businesses and enforcement officers held in November 2008, from responses to a full three-month public consultation and from an Agency-funded trial between cooperating business and enforcement authorities.
Source: Food Standards Agency
