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Keller and Heckman Partner Rachida Semail will present, “Holistic View of The Legislation Having an Impact on FCM” at the International Conference on Food Contact Compliance Webinar on September 29, 2020. Attendees will learn where the EU legislation is heading from the EU Commission, the latest developments in the US and in Asia, and meet representatives of the most relevant opinion leaders worldwide.

For more information on this event, please click here.

Keller and Heckman Partner Hazel O’Keeffe will present, “Update on the Regulation of Printing Inks in Food Packaging in Europe,” at the National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers (NAPIM) Virtual Fall Technical Conference 2020. NAPIM is a trade association that provides information and assistance to its members to better manage their businesses and to represent the printing ink industry in the United States.

Keller and Heckman Partner Rachida Semail will present, “Updates on EU Regulation for Food Contact Materials with Focus on Recycled Packaging,” at the Recycled Packaging for Food Contact Webinar. The theme of the webinar is: Meeting recycled content commitment and regulatory approvals. Other topics that will be covered include Solutions for reaching the commitment on recycled content and rPET for direct food contact.

The United Kingdom (UK) has issued a guidance on authorizing food contact materials (FCMs) now that it has exited from the European Union (EU). The Food contact materials authorisation guidance, published by UK’s Food Standards Agency on December 31, 2020, outlines the procedure for authorizing new FCMs to be placed on the market in Great Britain (GB).*

The guidance refers to several retained EU regulations and a directive (shown below) and points out that:

Food Packaging Forum (FPF) launched a new food-contact chemical database that lists 12,285 chemicals that are potentially used in the manufacture of food-contact materials. The list was developed from 67 regulatory positive lists and industry inventories. The researchers, led by FPF, noted that toxicity data are available for 71% of the food-contact chemicals. They also identified 608 of the chemicals as possible high-priority candidates for substitution in food-contact materials.

The European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) Panel on Food Contact Materials, Enzymes and Processing Aids (CEP) published an assessment  of the impact of IARC Monograph Vol. 121 on the safety of styrene for use in plastic food contact materials (FCMs). In September 2019, IARC updated its evaluation of styrene to classify the substance as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A).

The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture has notified the latest draft of its Mineral Oil Ordinance to the European Commission (EC). The updated version requires the use of a functional barrier in paper, paperboard or cardboard food contact materials containing recycled paper to prevent the transfer of mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH) to food. A transfer is deemed not to take place if it can be demonstrated that the following are not exceeded:

 

The 15th amendment to the Plastics Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2020/1245) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on September 3, 2020. The 15th amendment adds new substances to the positive list in Annex I, in addition to introducing several substantive changes to the Plastics Regulation. Some of the significant changes are listed below.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recently released for public consultation a draft guidance on technical requirements for regulated food and feed product applications to establish the presence of small particles, including nanoparticles.

Keller and Heckman is pleased to announce that registration is now open for its annual Food Packaging Law Seminar, and new this year, the Pre-Conference Workshop on Chinese Requirements. Now in its 12th year, this comprehensive food packaging law course is designed to provide regulatory, scientific, and legal professionals with up-to-date information on the latest food packaging law developments. This year, we will cover the basics on EU and U.S. food-contact legislation and will provide updates on global regulations relating to food-contact materials.