Food Contact Material

Rice cookers, juice machine, coffee machine... More and more electrical and electronic food preparing products are widely used and bring a great convenience in our daily lives. Although the concern to food safety is increasing as consumers paying more and more attention to life quality, the safety of food contact material is usually ignored. In fact, hazardous substances in food contact material may migrate to food in daily use, and then damage human health. This problem arouses increasing concerns, and leads to legislations on food contact materials in various countries to safeguard consumers’ safety.

The requirements of food contact material vary with various countries, materials, and even use conditions for the same material. Therefore, the destination country, material and use condition should be clear when controlling the food contact material. Common regulations in various countries are as follows:

Products with food contact materials include:

• Electric cooker, oven, coffee machine, etc.;
• Food container, chopping board, stainless steel, kitchen ware, etc.;
• Bowl, spoon, cup, plate, knife, fork, etc.

The regulation to food contact material is not only embodied in laws, but also realizes in government practice. Corresponding government departments in various countries will have market surveillance and tracing systems to food contact material. Once unqualified products are found, they will be publicly notified and then recalled or shut out by the customs. Recent typical recall cases include:

• Two EU emergent recalls to coffee machines for the excessive migration of heavy metals in November 2008, click to view the detail (PDF 224 KB)
  
  
• Total 23 EU alerts on melamine (melamine resin) material from 2008 to now, and the vast majority products imported from China
  
  
• China (including mainland China and Hong Kong) as the most notified product origin by the data from European Rapid Alert System Food Feed (RASFF) yearly reports
  
  

Relying on the worldwide specialists and the wealth of experiences in inspection, verification, testing and certification, SGS provides all-round food contact material testing and consultancy services for enterprises, which helps enterprises to check the compliance of food contact material like plastic, ceramic, rubber, coating, etc. in EU, US, China, and so on.