Conclusions from a Swiss official control of the safety assessment for food contact polyolefins through the compliance documentation of the producers

ABSTRACT

Swiss control authorities checked the safety assessment of nine major producers of polyolefin granulates for making food contact materials. It was a pilot project to gain experience on the procedure of collecting and evaluating compliance documentation, but also to obtain insight into the quality of compliance work performed by the main plastic producers. It revealed that there are fundamental problems in performing such control. These are reported with proposals for improvement. For most products, the safety assessment made available did not correspond to the requirements, as confirmed by a group of internationally recognised experts, who were asked for their opinion on whether the safety of the migrates was assessed in accordance to ‘internationally accepted scientific methods on risk assessment’, as required by Art. 19 of Regulation (EU) 10/2011 and specified by EFSA.

KEYWORDS:

• Compliance work
• polyethylene
• polypropylene
• oligomers
• enforcement
• plastic regulation

Acknowledgments

The Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) invited the meeting of experts for the evaluation of the documentations received.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.