The implications of future EC food contact legislation for lacquer coated food and beverage cans

European Commission Directive 90/128/EEC and its amendments, relating to the 'safety' of plastics used for food packaging, places limits on the quantities of substances migrating from the plastics packaging to the food. An overall migration limit (OM) 'controls' the total quantity of all substances migrating from the plastics packaging to the foodstuff and, where required from toxicological data, specific migration limits [SMLs) 'control' the migration of individual substances. Migration testing is therefore necessary to ensure compliance with the requirements of the Directives, but due to difficulties which ton occur in performing the tests with foodstuffs the migration tests ore usually tarried out with food simulants. Directive 90/128/EEC is expected to he further amended in the next few years with a 'coatings' Directive to cover materials and articles consisting of polymeric coatings on all substrate materials. If safety and migration restrictions similar to those now in forte for plastics ore introduced, a will be necessary to carry out overall and specific migration testing on lacquer coated food and beverage cans. A number of problems and difficulties have already been identified when performing migration tests on lacquer tooted food and beverage coos, some of which also occur with plastics. However, recent changes to the testing rules and protocols for plastics and the results from other investigation projects should in the future enable reliable migration tests to be performed on lacquer coated food and beverage cans.