Specific packaging requirements for the main types of foods: Vortrag gehalten auf der "EURO FOOD PACK" bei der Bundeskammer der Gewerblichen Wirtschaft 19.-21.Sept. 1984 in Wien.

Packaging is not an abundant and luxurious thing, just good for overpackaging and waste, but has firstly a function in product protection. This is only to reach, if there is knowledge about the interdependence between the sensitivity of foods to the different environmental conditions and the properties of the many kinds of packaging materials and constructions. Furthermore it is an optimising operation involving scientific, technical, commercial and nowadays also ecological items. Recently these questions became actual, because the keeping quality of foods in consumer packages is no longer a more or less defined and codified declaration, but it has to be open dated. Who is engaged in this problem knows, that the discussions concerning the quality level which has to be realised not yet are finished. Sure is you cannot indicate one general date for a special product in the different types of packages. In this situation a scientist suddenly may find himself involved in the rather hard competition of the industrial companies on the market. Of importance in all these described influences and reactions is a decision as to what extent of degradation is considered to be the end of shelf-life. In many cases the data must be correlated with sensory testing of foods and voting based on a scale. Nevertheless all over the world attempts are made to use the highly sophisticated methods of modern instrumental analysis in combination with date processing in this field. However we are far away to have objective data to characterise food quality comprehensive