What is the definition of Primary Packaging?

Hi All,

I work at a red meat plant that have started to do cutting and boning.

First question, what is the definition of primary packaging and secondly  how do you go about setting up a system to maintain traceability of packaging.

Also the risk assessment currently in place for packaging is pretty basic, does anybody have any up to date templates for this, as I know auditors like to see new shiny stuff!

A lot to ask, but here's hoping,

Thanks.

Hi

Primary packaging is food contact packaging which you would use to wrap your meat in. There are various ways of tracing packaging - purchase order details, each type of packaging e.g. plastic wrap, cardboard etc. etc. will have a batch number. These numbers need to be recorded on the 'job card' or whatever paperwork is used to carry out the task for a customer. The meat must need to have traceability, the packaging details just need to be recorded with it.

Can't help you with the RA, but good luck!

Gets more complicated when you have a product where the case is the primary packaging except when you place it in a Blue Liner which then becomes the primary packaging.

where you use film on a roll or impressions (like bags of frozen chips) you can weigh the roll and track weight of rolles against impressions. These rolls would often have for example information about roll weight, number of impressions etc. which really helps.

Where the film used for wrapping is just clear and continuos like for example cling film type rolls, the amount applied to each block of meat may vary, which is where in your traceability you may need to simply justify mass balance variance.