Objective
Most food packages and food contact materials (FCMs) are manufactured using adhesives.
The EU regulates FCMs as their constituents may contaminate food and endanger consumer's health. In contrary to plastics which are regulated by positive lists of authorised ingredients, adhesives have not yet a specific regulation. When using this approach also for adhesives, hundreds of raw materials would be out of scope as they lack the standard information required by the risk assessment agencies.
This would pose high cost burdens for toxicity tests to adhesives industry which is dominated by SMEs and to all SMEs from the added value chain. The project wants to elaborate a scientific global risk assessment approach to meet current general EU regulatory requirements and as a basis for future specific EU legislation and to provide SME industry a tool to ensure that adhesives do not endanger consumer health.
The idea is to demonstrate that consumer's exposure to chemicals released by adhesives is in many cases below levels of concern.
Technical/scientific knowledge from industry and RTDs will be merged into a collective research endeavour gathering all stakeholders. Major milestones are
(i) classification of adhesives according to chemistry and uses,
(ii) test strategies based on physico-chemical behaviour of adhesives,
(iii) modelling migration/exposure from adhesives,
(iv) providing guidelines to integrate the risk assessment approach into the daily life of companies,
(v) application of toxicological approach from EU BIOSAFEPAPER programme (ending 2006) and
(vi) extensive training/education to SMEs and large dissemination for general adoption of the concept in Europe.
The project involves experts contributing to the EU regulation for FCMs, which favours a dialog with authorities. Overall, competitiveness of adhesive SMEs will be strengthened and confidence in food packaging safety and thus in food (packaging) industry will be increased and consumer health better protected.
Fields of science
Keywords
Call for proposal
FP6-2004-SME-COLL
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Funding Scheme
Collective - SMEs-Collective research projectsCoordinator
Participants (21)
ESPARRAGUERA
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FIAES VFR
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