If you have a history buff in the house (like I do – and it’s not me!) you notice that over the course of history - the more things change, the more they stay the same. We seem to be programmed to do everything bigger, better, faster all in the name of progress, but is it really progress? OK, I can take this thought process to about a gazillion different places but I’d like to focus on one of my greatest frustrations in the food industry today – plastic packaging…
We hunted and gathered, we bartered, we hopped onto ships and bartered some more. Cutting a very long story short – we spread ourselves around, commerce was invented and then we went to the moon.
I found this wonderful blog that will entertain (and fill in the gaping hole in my less than laymen’s history lesson) – you can click on the globe to read it
So, what exactly does the man on the moon have to do with plastic packing in the food industry? HACCP – five letters and seven principles later and we have a recipe on how to produce safe food from farm to fork.
HACCP was developed in the late 1950s by a team of food scientists and engineers from The Pillsbury Company, the Natick Research Laboratories, and NASA. The team developed a system designed to build quality into the product to ensure food safety for the manned space program. Just imagine the chaos if unsafe food made it onto Apollo 11 and there was an outbreak of gastro – or rather, don’t!
So, HACCP principles were followed by the NASA space program (clearly, they worked) and they eventually became a legal requirement for trading in the food industry in 1990. Click on the info-graphic below to satisfy your curiosity on how HACCP developed. It’s a great read!
In order to produce food to HACCP principles, you need to make sure that you have taken every precaution to prevent every food safety risk that could take place. You play devil’s advocate, ask “what if” until you run out of “what if’s” and then you introduce the solutions you came up with for all the potential problems. Plastic packaging? The solution to transporting food from the factory to the retailer and from the retailer to you. It keeps viruses, bacteria, dirt and other contaminants off the product – and allows you to see the product. My office has a window into our Factory Shop – and it’s easy to see (pun intended) how important it is for consumers to be able to see what they are buying… They pick it up, turn it around, inspect it from all angles, before deciding to buy. You can’t do that when something is in a box or brown bag… It’s fresh. You want to make sure it’s fresh – no mould and this extends to fresh fruit and vegetables as well (no bruising). These are all products that are alive and start deteriorating soon after production or picking – hence the sell by best before date.
Unfortunately, in terms of fresh food produce, I can’t see the use of plastic being eliminated, reduced yes. Its’ role is too important. However, what manufacturers can do is make sure that the plastic we use is recyclable. What consumers can do is recycle. If your local recycling station doesn’t offer a complete solution – campaign / complain – we are all equally responsible for this dilemma and its’ resolution.
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