Recent Advances in Food Contact Materials: Chemicals Migration and Safety Assessment

Dear Colleagues,

Due to the short shelf life of food products, food packaging has become the primary application for plastic materials. Over the past two decades, the volume of waste generated has continuously increased. Numerous national and transnational regulations currently in effect or development aim to promote the use of recycled materials or encourage the reuse of packaging. Today, we are confronted with a patchwork of criteria, mechanical and chemical recycling technologies, collection methods and evaluation standards. There is a serious risk of compromising our food safety systems with the uncontrolled incorporation of recycled materials unfit for food contact. The number and type of substances, as well as their transferable quantities to food, could significantly increase in the future. It would not be inappropriate to consider that certain substances may become persistent and that some contaminations could shift from being incidental to systemic.

The goal of this Special Issue of Foods is to provide a forum for discussing emerging risks, new methods of risk assessment and management including specific or global analytical approaches, machine learning applied to the rapid search for fingerprints or used for the authentication and traceability of sources or technologies, and modeling approaches for transfer (migration). Discussions on the evaluation of the toxicity of substances in mixtures in the context of food contact materials are also encouraged, as are methods aimed at quickly estimating the toxicity (genotoxicity, endocrine disruption) of substances used or encountered in packaging. Artificial intelligence technologies aimed at better identifying waste for the implementation of closed-loop systems on food packaging, as well as marking and coding techniques at the industry level, will find their place in this forum. Similarly, studies examining the consequences of chemical contamination for the shelf life of foods, the risk of food wastage and consumer perception are welcome. All types of food contact materials (synthetic, cellulosic, etc.) are a priori acceptable, as well as studies comparing applications (e.g., food and healthcare packaging) or those discussing the risk of upcycling/downcycling.

This Special Issue accepts original research articles, critical reviews and position papers if they are well-argued. Articles may be technical but must remain accessible to a broad community. It is essential to remember that the circular economy applied to packaging involves many stakeholders and skills that do not always share the same concepts or vocabulary.

Dr. Olivier Vitrac
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Foods is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• food contact materials
• chemical migration
• safety assessment
• recycling technologies
• risk management
• analytical approaches
• machine learning in food safety
• toxicity evaluation
• circular economy
• sustainable packaging