GMP Guidance for Packaging Industry

Hello Simon and others participans on this issue

BRC/IoP standard is a good guidance for the food contact packaging undustries but

¿ could anybody tell if there is any european or international regulations/recommendations/paper,board,pulp,liner sector guidances which can help the packaging indutry to implement GMP ?

Thank all you in advance

regards

Esther

Hello Simon and others participans on this issue

BRC/IoP standard is a good guidance for the food contact packaging undustries but

¿ could anybody tell if there is any european or international regulations/recommendations/paper,board,pulp,liner sector guidances which can help the packaging indutry to implement GMP ?

Thank all you in advance

regards

Esther

Hi Esther,

The BRC Global Standard - Food Packaging and other packaging materials, as it is now called is applicable to both food contact and non-food contact packaging. Within the Standard there are two categories of supplier Category B (food contact) and Category A (non-food contact) with different requirements specified for each. There is also a decision tree to detemine, which category applies to your product.

Hope this helps.

Simon

Hi Esther,

The BRC Global Standard - Food Packaging and other packaging materials, as it is now called is applicable to both food contact and non-food contact packaging. Within the Standard there are two categories of supplier Category B (food contact) and Category A (non-food contact) with different requirements specified for each. There is also a decision tree to detemine, which category applies to your product.

Hope this helps.

Simon

Hi Simon

Thank you for you answer.

The reason of my question is:

Imagine a Food Packaing Association asked you to make a GMP and Hygiene practices Manual for these kind of industries. I think that follow the guidances from BRC-IoP could help but I am searching for regulations and other GMP codes.

Any suggestion to start with will be appreciate.

Regards
Esther

"To cover the manufacturing of packaging made of corrugated and solid board so as to satisfy market demands for hygienic requirements such as exist in the food industry"

The International Good Manufacturing Practice Standard for Corrugated and Solid Board

There is the FEFCO Standard above but I've not seen it.

Regards,
Simon

"To cover the manufacturing of packaging made of corrugated and solid board so as to satisfy market demands for hygienic requirements such as exist in the food industry"

The International Good Manufacturing Practice Standard for Corrugated and Solid Board

There is the FEFCO Standard above but I've not seen it.

Regards,
Simon

Hello Simon

Thank you very much.

I will take a look to it.

Regards
Esther

Dear All,

This is more of a footnote in what for me is an "alien" area so please feel free to correct if not current etc.

The, IMO, very nicely worded comment below by Simon was taken from the current thread –
http://www.ifsqn.com...amp;#entry14689

“The EU regulates food contact packaging materials, but not how they are manufactured e.g. HACCP / GMP. What we have in the UK is the BRC Global Standard - Food Packaging standard, which was written by the retailers, food producers and packaging companies to standardise the GMP requirements for packaging producers and also to reduce the costs of customer audits. There are hundreds of packaging companies registered to the standard in the UK and actually throughout the world. If you want to know more you can read about the standard here: Clicky”

It may surprise the professional packaging people but I think that many users-only would not be aware of the first sentence of quote (including me). My ignorance prompted me to probe (cautiously) into the Packaging Sector of the forum and I noticed this thread from Esther regarding alternatives to BRC.

I looked a bit further for some background and got this -

DEVELOPMENT OF A FEFCO STANDARD

The stated intention of the BRC and IOP was to extend acceptance of their document as the single
standard for packaging manufacture for the whole of Europe. Although translation into a number of
other European languages has taken place, uptake of the standard outside the UK has been rather
patchy. During the later months of 2001 the European corrugated board industry, through its
confederation FEFCO, identified that with the publication of the BRC/IOP Standard there was actually
the potential for a multiplicity of standards relating to corrugated board. This was because of the
publication of standards specific to corrugated board manufacture in France and the Netherlands.
FEFCO therefore proposed the production of a European-wide standard specific to corrugated board.
The UK Corrugated Sector, participated in the development of the FEFCO Standard on the basis that
it was be totally compatible with the BRC/IOP Standard.
The title of the FEFCO Standard is “Standard for Good Manufacturing Practice for Corrugated Board”.
Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) can be defined as “the combination of manufacturing and quality
control procedures aimed at ensuring that products are consistently manufactured to their
specifications”. This means that the standard is the equivalent of the BRC/IOP Standard in covering
both quality and hygiene requirements and also provides the GMP to fulfil the requirements of the
European Union regulations for materials for food contact.
DEVELOPMENT OF A CEN STANDARD
In February 2004 the Technical Committee for Packaging in CEN (European Committee for
Standardization) took the decision to produce a European Standard with the title “Management of
hygiene in the production of packaging for foodstuffs”. The intention of this development is also to
reduce the proliferation of standards covering the manufacturing of packaging for food and indeed th
Chairman of the Technical Committee stated that the aim was have only two standards being used,
the BRC/IOP Standard and the CEN Standard. The work on the standard is in progress and the
anticipated date for completion is early in 2008.

( http://www.paper.org..._bulletin08.pdf )(April 2006)

(If interested, the basic structure of FEFCO standard is given here –

http://www.dnv.it/Bi...cm19-217041.pdf. )


However the comment above that FEFCO is equivalent to BRC seems debatable IMO since it appears that the former is apparently -
“ based on the assumption that no "Critical Control Point" exists for the cardboard-specific production process, because all risks are adequately controlled by GMPs. A general "hazard inventory" for the individual production plants and a consistent GMP set are provided”
( http://www.dnv.com/b...tcm4-192301.pdf. )

This would seem to assume a ubiquitous, perfect process which is an impossible (dangerous?) generalisation, don't you think ?

Rgds / Charles.C

added after some reflection - Of course, if the result of all BRC submissions of packaging processes is that they are all free of CCPs, then I suppose FEFCO are, de facto, in agreement. Such would certainly be a rather convenient result. I did have a quick look to see if any polls here on number of CCPs in packaging processes but could only see the one in HACCP forum which is primarily food. The interesting query is whether any people here have a packaging process WITH a CCP, if so, where??

added after some reflection - Of course, if the result of all BRC submissions of packaging processes is that they are all free of CCPs, then I suppose FEFCO are, de facto, in agreement. Such would certainly be a rather convenient result. I did have a quick look to see if any polls here on number of CCPs in packaging processes but could only see the one in HACCP forum which is primarily food. The interesting query is whether any people here have a packaging process WITH a CCP, if so, where??

An oldie, but I only just spotted your question. I have only ever seen one CCP in packaging, which was a pre order clean down to prevent mixed printed designs - cross contamination? Really to prevent in the most extreme case an allergenic product from being in the wrong packaging.

I think Okido would agree that with the new Commission Regulation (EC) No. 2023/2006 on good manufacturing practice for materials and articles intended to come into contact with food . Printed packaging maufacturers will need to review their HACCP plans and this could well become a Critical Control Point.

Regards,
Simon