Download The Forgotten Food ingredient: Good Manufacturing Practices for Safely Manufacturing Food Packaging

Food packaging is globally recognized as a potential (if unintended) food ingredient, representing sources of biological, chemical and/or physical hazards. Biological risk to food safety from packaging is similar in kind but different in degree from the food manufacturing process context. While food packaging may carry pathogens, in most cases it will not promote their reproduction and growth. Rather, packaging’s chemical risk to food is of primary concern. Both the manufacture of packaging separate from the processing of the food to be placed in it and the long term exposure of packaged food to its packaging materials increase chemical risk. Physical hazards from both the packaging and its manufacturing process are comparable to food processing itself. These differences between manufacturing packaging and food processes require good manufacturing practices also similar in kind, but different in degree. This presentation explores such differences and suggests risk assessment approaches that lead to appropriate good manufacturing practices for food packaging manufacturing.
Thomas J. Dunn