Plastic Materials and Articles in Contact with Food (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000

Amendment of Regulations

6.  In regulation 5 (restriction on manufacture with additives)—

(a) for paragraph (1) there shall be substituted—

“(1) Subject to the following paragraphs, no person shall use in the manufacture of plastic materials or articles any prohibited additive, that is to say an additive identified by PM/Ref No., CAS No. (if any) and name respectively in columns 1, 2 and 3 of Part I of Schedule 2 which—

(a) is not of good technical quality, or

(b) is not used in accordance with the restrictions and specifications (if any) set out in the corresponding entry in column 4 of the relevant section of that Part of that Schedule.”; and

(b) there shall be added at the end the following paragraphs—

“(4) Subject to paragraph (5), where column 4 of Part I of Schedule 2 expresses a migration limit of mg/kg in relation to any additive, no plastic material or article manufactured containing that additive shall be capable of transferring constituents of that additive to food with which that plastic material or article may come into contact in quantities exceeding the appropriate limit, and for the purposes of this paragraph the appropriate limit is—

(a) the number of milligrams expressed therein released per kilogram of food in the case of any plastic material or article other than one specified in sub-paragraph (b); and

(b) one sixth of the number of milligrams expressed therein per square decimetre of surface area of the plastic material or article if the plastic material or article comprises—

(i) an article which is a container or is comparable to a container or which can be filled, with a capacity of less than 500 millilitres or more than 10 litres, or

(ii) sheet, film or other material which cannot be filled or for which it is impracticable to estimate the relationship between the surface area of that material and the quantity of food in contact with that surface area.

(5) A plastic material or article manufactured containing an additive in respect of which column 4 of Part I of Schedule 2 expresses a migration limit of mg/kg shall not be considered capable of transferring constituents of that additive to food with which that plastic material or article may come into contact in quantities exceeding the appropriate limit in paragraph (4) if the only food which that plastic material or article may come into contact with is food to which regulation 7(3) applies.”.