Assessing Food Safety of Polymer Packaging

Book excerpt: Many foods depend on additives for safety, stability or preservation. Foods are packaged to protect them and keep them in good condition while they are delivered to shops, stacked on shelves or stored at home. The packaging material has to both preserve the food and to protect it from deterioration, outside contamination or damage during distribution and storage; and the packaging material in direct contact with a food must not itself harm, or be harmed by, the food. The packaging material for a particular food must therefore be carefully selected with these considerations in mind. This book is designed to help current and prospective researchers in this field, understand the theory of food safety in plastic packaging. It will be of interest to anyone who uses polymeric food packaging.