Food Safety

The globalization of the food supply requires the harmonization of policies and standards based on a common understanding of food safety among authorities in countries around the world. Food packaging is an essential part of modern food processing. Micro- and nanoplastics have the potential to be transferred between trophic levels and, therefore, the risk characterization and the assessment of dietary exposure to them constitutes a current challenge for food safety alongside the study of the role of plastics as vectors of other contaminants and pathogenic microorganisms. Food hygiene and safety usually refer to contamination with microorganisms or microbes. From the point of view of food security, antimicrobial substances used in developing active packaging must be approved to be in contact with the food, and must, therefore, be considered generally considered as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.