Health Products and Food Branch Packaging Materials Assessment Process
When a manufacturer or a distributor, also called notifier, decides to commercialize a food packaging material and to obtain the Health Products and Food Branch's opinion for its safety for the intended uses, he/she contacts suppliers of raw materials to ensure their compositions have already been disclosed to the Health Products and Food Branch or to request their disclosure to the Health Products and Food Branch. If a material is already in the file with the Health Products and Food Branch, a supplier provides to the notifier the Health Products and Food Branch file number (KS) for reference. If a material has not been evaluated by the Health Products and Food Branch, supplier submitsFootnote 2 directly to the Health Products and Food Branch full composition of the materialFootnote 1 used in the manufacture the food packaging material. Notifier prepares a notification letter disclosing the name, grade, full composition of packaging materialFootnote 1, its intended uses, and/or available information on raw materials, and sends it to the Health Products and Food Branch. The Health Products and Food Branch receives notification letter, assigns a file number (KS) for reference, sends an acknowledgement letter to the notifier, and places notification in queue. An evaluator from the Health Products and Food Branch verifies a notification for completeness and ensures the Health Products and Food Branch has data on hand for each raw material received from notifier's supplier and assesses the safety of the packaging material for the proposed intended uses. If data is not complete, the Health Products and Food Branch sends letter to the notifier requesting additional information. If data received from supplier(s) is adequate, the Health Products and Food Branch sends a letter indicating that the data submitted was adequate for the assessment of the notifier's product. If data is complete and no health issue is identified, the Health Products and Food Branch issues to the notifier a no-objection letter. Chemical composition should be provided in the form of a quantitative list of all the ingredients used in its manufacture. Each ingredient should be identified by its trade name, grade, supplier, chemical name, and Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) registry number. Information provided by the notifier's supplier remains confidential with Health Canada.Image of Health Canada's packaging materials assessment process
Footnotes
Notes:
- Full composition is in the form of a quantitative listing of all components in which each one is identified by proper chemical name and/or trade name, grade and supplier).
- The information provided by the notifier's supplier remains confidential with Health Canada if requested.
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