Food Toxicology 2(2+0)

Lesson 26 : Food packaging material – potential contaminants from food packaging material

Packaging materials

Packaging materials can be grouped into two main types:

1. Shipping containers, which contain and protect the contents during transport and distribution but have no marketing function. Examples include sacks, corrugated fiberboard (cardboard) cartons, shrink-wrapped or stretch-wrapped containers, crates, barrels or drums.

2. Retail containers, which protect and advertise the food for retail sale and home storage. Examples include metal cans, glass or plastic bottles and jars, plastic tubs, pots and trays, collapsible tubes, paperboard cartons and flexible plastic or paper bags, sachets and overwraps.

Frequently, more than one type of material is used to package a single product. For example, display cartons may contain multiple packs of food packaged in flexible film. These in turn are placed in corrugated board shipping boxes and loaded onto pallets.