Food Contact Material Migration Testing

Food contact materials (FCMs) are materials or articles that come into contact with food and drinks. These include both food package materials and any other materials or articles (e.g., storage containers and food processing machines). Packaging materials, which carry all necessary information about the product, such as the food ingredients and guidance for storage and preparation, usually have direct contact with food and therefore have to be safe and stable. FCMs should not change the nature, substance or quality of the food and must not transfer their components into the foods in unacceptable quantities (migration). Lifeasible is your trusted partner for the analysis of food packaging and other materials. We can provide customized migration testing service of FCMs to help your food products comply with health and safety requirements.

Figure 1. Migration of food contact materials to food products.

Our food laboratories at Lifeasible provide comprehensive methods for FCMs migration testing, including overall migration testing, specific migration testing, and non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) testing.

• Overall migration testing

The overall migration testing detects the amount of a substance that migrates from the material to a liquid that simulates a food’s extractive capacity. This test allows tracking of the total quantity of the substances transferred by the tested material, but cannot tell the identities of the migrated components.

• Specific migration testing

The specific migration test allows the quantification of certain substances (monomers, additives, plasticizers, elements and metals, etc.) in a food simulant.

• Non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) testing

We also offer NIAS studies to identify and quantify chemical compounds that are present in materials but are not added during the production process for technical reasons. NIAS may originate from the breakdown of food contact materials or impurities in raw materials.

Our food contact materials migration testing service is available worldwide. Our laboratories perform the testing assays in compliant with recognized standards such as UNI EN, DIN, LMBG, FDA, ISO, etc. Lifeasible has developed a cost-efficient migration testing platform with highly sophisticated analytical methods such as gas chromatography, liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, elemental analyses, and more. Our migration testing service can be applied for a wide range of materials, including plastics, papers and board, coatings, and printing inks. Our expert team can offer you comparable and reliable results with standardized test conditions including testing time, temperature and test medium (food simulant).

If you would like further information please feel free to contact us.