In recent times, there have been media reports of day care centers and schools banning all children from bringing peanuts or peanut products in their lunches. Peanut allergies are so severe in some very young children, that even a trace from another child's hands will cause an anaphylactic shock which, if not treated urgently, could result in death. Food packaging suppliers therefore have an enormous responsibility to the consumer to ensure that their manufacturing methods, and their final product, will deliver safe food products free from harmful contaminants and allergens. Most Food Codes in some countries monitor the industry to give guidelines to manufacturers and confidence to the consumer that their food is safe.
Packaging suppliers have been constantly working towards the improvement of food packaging product features to eliminate these contamination issues. The reputation of their company is on the line with every discovery of a foreign substance in any packaged product, and the investigations that follow such a discovery are costly, time-consuming and, more often than not, fruitless.
Often the offending object has entered the chain in the food itself, when the food product is being manufactured, and has been encased in the packaging by an automated process which is the responsibility of the food manufacturer and not the packaging supplier. All avenues must be investigated however, and the manufacturing process for the packaging will be scrutinized, the equipment checked and quality processes validated to ensure that there is no possibility of a contaminant entering the chain via the packaging.
In addition to the extra scrutiny over and above the routine batch checking that occurs in most manufacturing processes, the packaging suppliers must also ensure that there are adequate disclosures printed on the outside of the packaging to alert consumers to any potential health threat. The most common of these disclosures are food products that can cause allergic reactions in certain people.
It has been observed that there has recently been a larger number of people experiencing allergic reactions, the range and severity of which continuously increases every year, and medical professionals are still uncertain of the cause. There are some allergens that are repeat offenders, and some that pop up unexpectedly every now and then. A number of key food allergens, such as peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, finned fish, milk, eggs, sesame, soy beans and wheat are particularly stated in some countries' food codes and web sites.
If there is any possibility that minute quantities of contaminants, such as peanuts for example, may have come in contact with food packaging, even by the packaging going through a machine that previously was used in making peanut based foods, it must now display a warning. It is important that consumers contact food packaging suppliers when unsure of the level of danger being faced with packaged foods.
Author Resource:-
Food packaging is a convenient and obvious place to put consumer information such as nutritional content and other disclosures. Packaging suppliers such as Dabron Packaging http://www.dabron.com.au/ must ensure, however, that their product can protect the contents from contamination.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articlesbacklink.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
