Proceedings of the closing conference of the EU project "Foodmigrosure" QRLT-2001-2390 : modelling migration from plastics into foodstuffs as a novel and cost efficient tool for estimation of consumer exposure from food contacts materials

The closing conference of the EU project Foodmigrosure project gathered 140 participants from both the EU as well as Norway, Switzerland, US, Japan, Thailand etc. The objective of the project was to develop a normative predictive tool to assess safety of food contact materials. The scientific conference exhibited the results of comprehensive sets of migration data for a wide range of substances and large sets of various foodstuffs. The data obtained allowed to validate a migration models on real foods both for compliance as worst case or refined for exposure assessment. The results also showed aspects of food chemistry that can influence migration, and initiated a new area of public risk perception specific to food contact materials safety. These systematic kinetics studies have a direct impact on Directive 85/572/EC on correspondence factors of foodstuffs and food simulants; The results obtained also show an impact on 2002/72/EC on allowing the use of mathematical modelling, a the data is used to validate the current diffusion model for further applications; in addition The project shows an impact on risk assessment from systematic kinetics of migration related to real foods in different conditions for exposure assessment (EFSA), as well on standardisation (CEN) from the development of methods in foodstuffs. The conference was organised both around keynote speakers of the different workpackages as well as in day external speakers from different branches of stakeholders exemplifying the added value of the project for their field. The participants were evenly distributed between industrial stakeholders (40%), National Reference Laboratories/Government (30%), and institutions, associations, academia etc (30%).