Safety and Sustainability: The Call for Resourceful Packaging
In the food packaging industry, food safety is a top priority in everything we do. In addition to producers and retailers, who depend on food safety to deliver responsible products that build and secure their brand reputations, there’s also an ever-increasing expectation from consumers that their food products are safe to eat. In fact, consumers today place concerns over food safety and food waste above climate change, air pollution and water shortages, according to a 2014 Harris Poll consumer food waste study.[1] But food safety has long been top of mind. The year 2016 marked the 75th anniversary of Henry DePoix’s original innovation of shrink wrap technology—pioneered at the onset of World War II as a better way to preserve meat for French soldiers and first introduced to the market by Cryovac®. Today, the industry continues to develop better packaging to meet new food challenges.
Two key issues—food safety and food waste—are inextricably linked. We as an industry shoulder a big responsibility to deliver effective outcomes and provide consumers, retailers and processors with peace of mind about the safety and sustainability of the food they process, pack, sell and consume. With that framework in mind, Sealed Air took a look at one of its innovative solutions: Darfresh® on Tray—a sustainable vacuum skin packaging system for fresh red meat and poultry—in the Darfresh on Tray Meat Packaging Economic and Sustainability Impact Study.[2]