Directive 2007/19 - Amendment of Directive 2002/72/EC relating to plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food and Council Directive 85/572/EEC laying down the list of simulants to be used for testing migration of constituents of plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with foodstuffs - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 91/17

Commission Directive 2002/72/EC (2) is a specific Directive within the meaning of the framework Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004, harmonising the rules for the plastics materials and articles intended to come into contact with food.

Directive 2002/72/EC establishes a list of authorised substances for the manufacture of those materials and articles, in particular additives and monomers, the restrictions on their use, rules on labelling as well as the information to be given to consumers or to food business operators concerning correct use of those materials and articles.

Information provided to the Commission demonstrates that the plasticizers used e.g. in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gaskets in lids may migrate into fatty foods in quantities that could endanger human health or bring about an unacceptable change in the composition of the foods. It should therefore be made clear that, even if they are part of e.g. metal lids, gaskets fall under the scope of Directive 2002/72/EC. At the same time, specific rules should be laid down as regard the use of additives for the manufacture of those gaskets. It is appropriate to take account of the need of lid manufacturers to have sufficient time to adapt to some of the provisions of Directive 2002/72/EC. In particular, taking into account the time needed to prepare an application for the evaluation of specific additives used for the manufacture of gaskets of lids, it is not yet possible to establish a timetable for their evaluation. Therefore, in a first stage, the positive list of authorised additives that will be adopted in the future for plastic materials and articles should not apply for the manufacture of gaskets in lids, so that the use of other additives will remain possible, subject to national law. This situation should be reassessed at a later stage.

On the basis of new information related to the risk assessment of substances evaluated by the Authority and the need to adapt to technical progress the existing rules for calculating migration, Directive 2002/72/EC should be updated. For reasons of clarity definitions of technical terms used should be introduced.

The rules for overall migration and specific migration should be based on the same principle and should therefore, be aligned.

Specific rules should be introduced to improve the protection of infants, since infants ingest more food in proportion to their body weight than adults.

The verification of compliance with the specific migration limits (SML) in simulant D for additives listed in Annex III, Section B, to Directive 2002/72/EC should be applied at the same time as the other provisions for calculating migration introduced in this Directive for better estimation of the real exposure of the consumer to those additives. Therefore, the deadline for application of the abovementioned verification of...