Food safety

Food safety matters. To recall products is costly in time and money – and can wreck consumer confidence that you have worked years to establish. That is why safety assessments should be included early in the development stages of a product.

With our detailed knowledge of food toxicology and food regulations, we can help you with safety assessment of food contact materials, food ingredients, raw materials, processing aids and additives.

We also carry out risk assessments of contaminants and can assist you in setting limit values in connection with HACCP and ISO 22000. Many of our projects include toxicological data searches, but we also offer data searches as a separate service.

DHI is an approved food safety advisor by the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration.

In the many EU member states all food contact materials must be accompanied by a declaration of compliance to document compliance with the EU regulation, including documentation that unwanted substances do not migrate from the FCM and into the food.

To prepare a declaration of compliance can be quite complex. There are many types of FCMs, and also many options of combining several layers of material to consider.

Based on our long-running experience in assessing compliance documents and in preparing declarations of compliance we can guide you through the process.

Assessment and calculation of migration

We help plan migration tests of food contact materials and ingredients and we also assess laboratory test results. If you need to test a product, we collaborate with accredited test laboratories.

When developing plastic packaging and plastic items we can assist you in predicting which substances might migrate into and from polymer plastic materials.

For this purpose, we have developed a validated tool that calculates to what extent a specific substance will migrate into food. The tool allows us to aid you in developing products that will pass a migration test.

Food supplements are supplements to the daily diet. We are well-versed in the many requirements in the EU regulations and can help you with assessment and documentation of product safety, including the nutritional and physiological effects of food supplements.

When we assess a food supplement we begin with the known ingredients, constituents from plants or animals, additives, processing aids etc. Then we carry out literature searches in databases to substantiate the assessment.

If  information about the product composition is insufficient we carry out data searches to get an indication of the composition, and if necessary we supplement with laboratory tests. When documentation is lacking, we identify gaps and recommend initiatives to obtain the required information.

If you want to add other substances than vitamins and minerals, such as concentrated extracts, this may require advance approval of the substance. We can help you if you need to submit safety documentation of special ingredients.

We can also help determine if an ingredient should be considered as novel food and assist with the safety assessment and application for approval of a novel food.