In the July/August 2011 issue of Folding Carton Industry magazine, an article regarding safety standards for food packaging caught my eye.
LD Davis sells three kinds of adhesives that are used in packaging. We manufacture liquid water-based adhesives, and hide glue (animal glue), and we distribute hot melt adhesives.
LD Davis Water-Based Adhesives in Packaging
Folding Carton Industry's article discussed how food packaging must not compromise or contaminate the food contents in any way. The substrate material, ink, and adhesive must have a minuscule to no effect on the food. All packaging materials must be safe to come into contact with the food, and our water-based adhesives are, because they're totally non-toxic. The water-based adhesives that L.D. Davis manufactures for food packaging are water-soluble and environmentally-friendly.
Both liquid, water-based adhesive and animal glue biodegrade quickly when introduced to the natural environment and, in food packaging, present no threat of contaminating the food inside the package.
According to the article, in good food package manufacturing the food should never come into contact with the side of the package that has ink printed on it. If packaging labels are stacked on top of each other or on a roll, small, invisible ink particles may attach to the non-printed side of the packaging and come into contact with the food. Packaging adhesives should also generally not come into contact with the food, but L.D. Davis water-based adhesives and animal glues are non-toxic, so they will not contaminate the food if they do come into contact.
Components of Water-Based Adhesives
While we definitely don't recommend snacking on our glue, if you really wanted to, you could. However, we all got our paste-eating habits out of our systems in kindergarten :) L.D. Davis animal glues, which are water-based adhesives, are made from the same edible gelatin used to make gel caps and other pills by pharmaceutical and nutritional companies. Pharmaceutical-grade gelatin is used in these types of pills, while food-grade gelatin is used in popular candy like gummy bears and snacks like Jell-O.
Safe, Green, Eco Adhesives
LD Davis is North America's premier and largest protein adhesive compounder. Our water-based adhesives are totally non-toxic and environmentally-friendly. We provide the food packaging industry with our Green Advantage, which comes from a long history of manufacturing green, non-toxic, water-based adhesives.
While the food packaging industry delves into safety regulations for terms of inks and substrates, they can rest assured that our packaging adhesives will certainly not contaminate the food inside the package. Our water-based adhesives - hide glues and liquid glues - are an asset to the food packaging industry because they are non-toxic, biodegradable, and certainly comply with food packaging safety regulations detailed in the recent Folding Carton Industry magazine article.
