Antimicrobial Packaging For Food Applications

Abstract

In recent years, food quality and safety have become major concerns across the border in the food industry. Active packaging (AP) is becoming increasingly important to overcome these concerns. Of the major AP technologies like oxygen scavenging, moisture absorption and control, carbon dioxide emitter and absorber, ethanol generator, antimicrobial and antioxidant packaging, and antimicrobial packaging is of great importance. Antimicrobial packaging has attracted much attention from the industry as an emerging technology for extending the shelf life and food safety of minimally processed and preservative free products. Use of antimicrobial packaging is useful in controlling the microbial growth and to target specific microbial pathogens to provide higher safety to the products. The characteristics of some antimicrobial packaging system, manufacturing of antimicrobial films, factors influencing the AM films, and future applications of antimicrobial packaging are discussed in this chapter.