The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Food Contact Notification (FCN) 772 to allow direct food contact with UV or electronic-beam formulations. The notice clears the way for UV- or EB-cured formulations to be used as coatings or components of coatings (both including inks) on polymeric substrates, paper and paperboard, metal substrates or as a component in adhesives.

FCN772 has been promoted by the Food Notification Alliance, a sub-group of RadTech North America. Since 2004, the alliance of chemical suppliers, packaging manufacturers and equipment providers has financed and promoted the notification applying to the FDA. The notification’s clearance, allowing any combination of cleared materials in direct food contact, is expected to widen the use of UV and EB in food packaging.

“The FCN772 clearance dramatically changes the perspectives of packaging and label printing press manufacturers,” says Federico d’Annunzio, president of Italian narrow-web pressmaker GIDUE SpA, the only pressmaker in the Food Notification Alliance. “This achievement discredits a number of false beliefs connected with UV curing. It is immediately clear which benefits will be introduced in the packaging printing environment, a sector where traditionally tight and strict rules are applied for indirect food contact.”

This is the first time that a regulation institution defines measurable threshold values under which the use of UV technology for food packaging is allowed. “The goal achieved by the alliance marks out a radical change for packaging printing,” continues d’Annunzio. “UV technology is restored into its strategic role within the packaging industry evolution, in opposition to water- or solvent-based technologies.”