A vision for safer food contact materials: public health concerns as drivers for improved testing

Food contact materials and articles are ubiquitous in today’s globalized food system. Chemicals migrate from food contact materials into foodstuffs, but current regulatory requirements do not sufficiently protect public health from hazardous food contact chemicals (FCCs) because only individual substances used to make food contact materials are tested and mostly only for genotoxicity while endocrine disruption and other hazard properties are disregarded. Indeed, food contact materials are a known source of a wide range of hazardous chemicals, and they likely contribute to highly prevalent non-communicable diseases. Food contact materials can also include non-intentionally added substances (NIAS), which often are unknown and therefore not subject to risk assessment. To address these important shortcomings, we outline how the safety of food contact materials may be improved by (1) testing the overall migrate, including (unknown) NIAS, and (2) expanding toxicological testing beyond genotoxicity to multiple endpoints associated with non-communicable diseases relevant to human health. To identify mechanistic endpoints for testing, we group chronic health outcomes associated with chemical exposure into Six Clusters of Disease (SCOD) and we propose that finished food contact materials should be tested for their impacts on these SCOD. Future research should focus on development of robust, relevant and sensitive in vitro assays based on mechanistic information linked to the SCOD, e.g., through Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) or Key Characteristics of Toxicants. Implementing this vision will improve prevention of chronic diseases that are associated with hazardous chemical exposures, including from food contact materials.