Call for global cooperation in food packaging safety

An international expert in packaging and food safety is calling for global collaboration when it comes to regulations that relate to the safety of food and beverage packaging.

The chemical interactions that can occur between food and its packaging is a delicate issue for the industry and the subject of much research, the head of life science, Food Packaging, Pharmaceutical and Medical Products from ofi, one of Austria's largest research and testing institutes for packaging and food safety, Dr Johannes Bergmair, told the Australian Institute of Packaging's (AIP) National Technical Forum last week.

He told attendees at the the forum, he;ld alongside AUSPACK PLUS 2013 in Sydney, that hormone active substances in particular needed to be tackled on an international level, yet the safety regulations relating to this type of problem varied greatly from country to country.

“The chemicals all over the world are the same, but they are regulated differently,” Dr Bergmair said. “This is a big problem but one that we are trying to solve.”

According to Dr Bergmair, the first step toward international cooperation on this issue  had been taken loast week when the board of the World Packaging Organisation (WPO) met on the sidelines of the AUSPACK show for its first full meeting for the year.

At that meeting the WPO board members agreed to form a working group in the next month to look at the issue, to collaborate and to raise awareness in the industry, he said.

Dr Bergmair told PKN that regulatory harmonisation would not be easy. “These are big, traditional systems that are not too easy to change,” he said.

Researchers in this area, meanwhile, were now focused on creating models that could more accurately calculate the risks, Dr Bergmair said.