The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has launched a public consultation on its draft risk assessment of five phthalates.

France notified a draft Order on rubber materials and articles intended to come into contact with food and pacifiers for infants and young children to the European Commission (EC), TRIS Notification 2019/57/F, on February 12, 2019.   The EC and the Member States have a three month “standstill period” (until May 13, 2019) to submit comments or detailed opinions (i.e. objections) on the draft text.  This standstill period may be extended by a further three months (i.e.

The European Commission (EC) asked the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to update its risk assessments for styrene and four other food contact materials (FCM) that are authorized in the EU’s Plastics Regulation, (EU) No 10/2011.  The EC also asked the EFSA to prioritize the need for re-evaluating the substances listed on the Plastics Regulation without a Specific Migration Limit (SML).

The five substances and their FCM numbers are:

The European Commission (EC) has launched a public consultation on the evaluation of food-contact materials (FCMs) as part of its evaluation of European Union legislation on food-contact materials. (For more information on the overall evaluation, see the PL.com article, European Commission Launches Webpage on the Evaluation of FCMs.)

The Council of the European Union published on January 18, 2019, an amended version of the draft Directive on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic products on the environment (also referred to as the “Single-Use Plastics Directive”). The amended draft directive makes significant changes to the European Commission’s (EC’s) original proposed draft of May 28, 2018.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced that it will share more of the scientific data used for EU-wide monitoring programs and surveys, and for many of the EFSA risk assessments. The details of how EFSA will share the data are included in a report, titled  Publication of scientific data from EU-coordinated monitoring programmes and surveys.

The European Commission published the 12th amendment to the Plastics Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 on January 11, 2019, in the Official Journal of the European Union.  This amendment, Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/37, adds new substances to the list of substances that may be used in food contact materials (also referred to as the positive list or the Union list), makes corrections to pre-existing substances on the positive list, and clarifies what food si

Germany’s new Packaging Law (VerpackG) became effective on January 1, 2019 and replaced the German Packaging Ordinance (VerpackV) . VerpackG establishes a new national authority (Zentrale Stelle), significantly increases targets for material recycling, and adds new registration and data reporting requirements.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has launched a public consultation on a draft guidance document on the use of the Threshold of Toxicological Concern (TTC) approach in food safety assessment. This draft guidance, when finalized, will update a 2012 EFSA Scientific Opinion on exploring options for providing advice about possible human health risks based on the concept of TTC.