2017/01/01 by Olivier Vitrac, Vitrac, Olivier, Mai Lan Nguyen +5
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #0 #Conception sûre #Emballage #Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability #Food safety #Innovation #Modeling #Modélisation #Packaging #Safe-by-design #Sécurité sanitaire
paper · doi:10.15454/1.513783598443995e12
openalex publication_date 2017/01/01 · openalex created_date 2018/01/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The sanitary crises associating food contact materials became more frequent during the past decade. They do not reveal more exposure to chemical substances, but, on the contrary, a better understanding and characterization of mass transfer phenomena between packaging materials and the food. The phenomena are predictable enough to consider innovative developments and the systematic use of safety engineering methodologies. This paper reviews the latest research results in the field and shows how mass transfer between the packaging and its content can be slowed down significantly. The key feature is the establishment of preventive methods of type-safe-by-design and the massive use of computational power, which enables to address all facets of the problem: the choice of substances, the mechanisms of mass transfer in the considered materials, simulation of mass transfers at the scale of the packaged food, calculations at the scale of the supply chain, identification of critical steps/components/substances. Nowadays, these methods are developed and proposed to the industry within the framework of a new Joint Technological Unit SafeMat between AgroParisTech/INRA and the LNE. They allow, in particular, to address the cases of multi-materials, of cross-contamination and of non-intentionally added substances regardless the lack of harmonized European regulation for the 17 groups of materials in contact with food.