Plastic Identification Testing: analysis of impurities and foreign bodies in food

Nowadays, food passes through different industrial processes until it arrives to the consumer’s mouth. These processes are: manufacture and elaboration, package, transport and distribution, placement in stands, etc. During these stages food can suffer from pollutions due to the appearance of foreign bodies. Even when manufacturers take care and comply with all the controls needed to avoid this situation, they appear once they are in the hands of the final consumer.

The origins of these foreign elements that appear as polluting impurities can be different: polluted raw materials, fragment of tools, machinery, supply lines, devices involved when producing the food, pollution by manipulation of the operatives, pollution when packing with remains of the same packaging and pollution during the transport (although packagings usually protect food from this incidence).

But, what should do those companies who find an impurity in their food? The solution is asking for the assessment of plastic laboratories. There, it will be possible to identify the material with which the impurity is made of, by means of an infrared spectrophotometry as an analytic technique. By identifying the foreign body’s material it will be possible to detect the origin and implement the right actions in order to avoid that it appears again in the final product.