Law on plastics coming into contact with foodstuffs amended, with view to adopting single positive list of additives
On 7 March 2008, the Official Journal of the EU published Commission Directive 2008/39/EC, which amends Commission Directive 2002/72/EC relating to plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with foodstuffs. The latest amendment, Commission Directive 2008/39/EC, concerns the eventual drawing up of a single positive list of additives that may be used by producers in their products.
Directive 2002/72/EC, which was adopted on 6 August 2002, already provides for lists of authorised substances, in particular additives and monomers, for the manufacture of plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with foodstuffs. That Directive also provides for restrictions on their use, as well as rules on labelling and on the information to be given to consumers or food business operators for the correct use of these materials and articles.
The existing list of additives, contained in Directive 2002/72/EC, is an incomplete list, inasmuch as it does not contain all substances that are currently accepted in one or more of the EU Member States. Fortunately for traders, however, the Commission had itself acknowledged that the list remains incomplete, until such time as the Commission would itself decide that it must become a final and positive Community-encompassing list of authorised additives.
For those additives which are currently permitted in the Member States, the time limit for the submission of data, by traders, for their safety evaluation by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) with a view to their inclusion in the Community list, expired on 31 December 2006. Therefore, the date when the Community list of additives becomes a positive list can now be ascertained: new Directive 2008/39/EC states that such date shall be 1 January 2010. In setting this date, the fact that EFSA needs time to evaluate all valid applications that were submitted on time has been taken into account.
Thus, until 31 December 2009, additives which are not included in the positive list of additives may continue to be used by traders, subject to national law. As from 1 January 2010, only additives included in the positive list may be used, on an EU-wide basis, for the manufacture of plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with foodstuffs.
Directive 2002/72/EC also provided for the drawing up of a provisional list of additives. Such provisional list will contain those additives for which the necessary data were supplied on time, but where no decision on their inclusion in the positive list will have been taken. The intention of the provisional list is to inform the public on the additives that are under evaluation. As it is impossible to know if such evaluations are completed by the date when the list of additives becomes a positive list (1 January 2010), the Commission deems that it should be possible to continue to use those additives under the respective national laws permitting them, until their evaluation is completed, and a decision taken whether to include them on the positive list.
In addition, on the basis of new information related to the risk assessment of monomers and additives that have been evaluated by EFSA, the various annexes set out in Directive 2002/72/EC are amended by means of Annexes I to V of Directive 2008/39/EC.
The new provisions of Directive 2008/39/EC have to be transposed by the Member States by 7 March 2009. They must then apply those provisions in such a way as to permit the trade in and use of the products concerned, which comply with the new provisions, from 7 March 2009; and prohibit such trade in products that do not so comply, as from 7 March 2010. In other words, traders will have to ensure that, by 7 March 2010, they will be using only the additives in the single positive list, unless it is still on the provisional list.
Keeping the above information in mind, you may like to view the 2002 Directive (2002/72/EC) and the new amending Directive (2008/39/EC), the links of which are provided below:
http://eur-lex.europ...20070420:EN:PDF
http://eur-lex.europ...006:0013:EN:PDF
Hi Joice, if you already had your material tested and it conforms with 2002/72/EC then you are OK until the final list is published in 2010. In the meantime you might want to check that your material does not contain any of the additives or monomers on the list under evaluation. If not you have no worries at all.
