The question mark over the safety of food items packaged in nanomaterials seems to get bigger by the day. The multidisciplinary science of Nanotechnology is actively contributing to fields such as agriculture and food industry. Use of Engineered nanoscale materials (ENMs) in food packaging is already an accepted procedure in the industry today. For example, these days’ bottles are made with nanocomposites. The latter helps in reducing the carbon dioxide leakage out of the bottles, thereby increasing the shelf life of product packaged in such bottles.
However these new materials have sparked a debate on the safety of food items being stored using such packaging. In an attempt to answer all such concerns a report was released by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) June 25th, 2005 in Washington, DC.The report is authored by former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy official Michael R. Taylor.
As food industry believes that every new emerging technology in this field must be scrutinized well before its wide-scale acceptance, food companies and consumers nurture similar interests. No body wants a potential hazard as was found later on by scientific studies in the case of plastic coated juice containers and other food packaging material. It was revealed that those juice cans and fruit-tins and other such items of daily consumption that are being lined by a special type of thin plastic are harmful to human health. The internal plastic layer in contact with the juice (food) was leaching dangerous chemicals into the stored food. Later on, such food packaging materials were withdrawn from the markets.
Then PEN-GMA report was the effort of several experts from government, industry and public interest communities. These people studied the fate of a number of hypothetical nanotechnology food packaging applications when the mandates of current regulatory system were applied on them. Nanomaterials that are suspected to change the characteristic of food items will be banned from future use. This kind of study will prove beneficial to the future of nanotechnology being in food industry. With this report and armed by new technologies and public safety concerns, we do hope the food packaging industry gets a boost to serve the larger interests of people.
Via ENN
Tags: carbon dioxide, FDA, Food, Food industry, Food Packaging, Food Safety, GMA, Health, Nanomaterials, Nanotechnology, PEN, Public Safety