Why Food Safety Starts With Your Packaging 

Ask someone what keeps food safe and they'll talk about the kitchen, the cooking temperature, the people handling it, the inspections. And they're right, all of that is a huge deal. But there's another piece that sits right up against the food and hardly anyone gives it a second thought: the packaging.

From the moment a product leaves the line to the moment someone opens it, it spends almost its entire life inside a package. That package is the last thing standing between the food and whatever might ruin it. A good package is fighting a few battles at once, and most of us never notice a single one of them.

Some of it is keeping the outside world out-bacteria, moisture, dirt, tampering. Some of it is holding off the spoilage that starts on the inside, where oxygen and the microbes already in the food will happily go to work the moment conditions allow. Some of it is just surviving the trip. Products get stacked, dropped, hauled around, left on shelves and packaging that gives out somewhere along the way can leave food exposed long before anybody notices it.

Packaging that touches food is basically a food product itself. The place where it comes from needs to be just as clean and controlled as a food plant. Without a real system for catching a problem before it goes out the door, that risk rides straight along into the food. And then from there to your customer. Picking a packaging supplier isn't really about buying a container, it’s about safety from the beginning of the packaging process, all the way to the end when the consumer opens it in their kitchen.

How are you supposed to know if a supplier's operation actually holds up? You're never going to walk through every supplier's facility yourself. However, there's a whole system set up to do that for you and it's worth knowing about.

The certifications that carry the most weight are the ones backed by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). SQF(or Safe Quality Food) is one of them, and there's a version of it written specifically for companies that make food packaging. They have to prove their compliance through outside audits, and then keep proving it year after year, with surprise checks always possible. For you, a supplier's certification answers a question you couldn't really answer on your own. It's a fast, believable way of knowing that a company's food-safety systems have been analyzed by people who do this for a living.

We're proud to be SQF certified. Our systems have been audited against one of the toughest standards out there, and they get checked again and again. It's how Teinnovations operates, everyday. Work with us and you're handing it to a partner who's already proven their operation is safe. Food safety doesn't stop in the kitchen. It runs all the way out to the package your product ships in and the company where it came from. If you want a packaging partner who takes that as seriously as you do, schedule a free packaging consultation today and see how Teinnovations can help.