FSA Reassures Consumers Over Mineral Oils in Packaging

On December 15^th 2011, the Food Standards Agency published the results of its survey, which looked into the possible migration into food of selected printing ink components from printed packaging materials. It concluded that there were no concerns in relation to health.

Dr Alison Gleadle, FSA Director of Food Safety, said: ‘This survey shows that food packaging can contain one or more different types of mineral oil. However, based upon the levels we found, we did not identify specific food safety concerns. Therefore, based on these survey results, people don’t need to change their eating habits.”

These results should put paid to the scares raised by the media in the spring of 2011 after Swiss Government scientists claimed they had found mineral oils migrating from recycled packaging into foodstuffs.

In addition, the European paper-based packaging industry has made a commitment to phase out the use of printing inks based on mineral oils for printing paper and board packaging, and mineral-oil-based process chemicals for food contact paper and board packaging material. In a press release issued by the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) the point was made that the industry has already made significant progress towards reducing the levels of mineral oils contained in its processes and products. In some cases a reduction of up to 90% in mineral oil levels has been observed over the last 24 months.