maiFood Contact Safety: Do not let building materials into your tummy

Food sustains life. Therefore, it is important to ensure that foods are not contaminated with any foreign particles that may endanger our health. When foods are prepared and placed on the table for consumption, many people merely think about the hygiene of the cutlery and assume that the tables are safe just because our eyes cannot see anything dirty on the surface.

However, have you ever thought about the possibility of the materials from the surface of the table transferring into foods without your realization? For example, you may have a spray-painted table to serve your dinner. When you pass your child an apple, she puts it on the table top to go wash her hands. When she picks up the apple again, will there be paint particles too small to be seen with the naked eye that gets transferred to the apple?

Nobody can be too sure about this, unless the table top material goes through a series of tests to validate the transfer of the materials to food stuff. Maica sends our products to ISEGA, a laboratory in Germany, to complete a series of tests to determine the transfer of our laminate materials to different food stuff to ensure that there is no transfer or a minimal transfer that does not harm our human health. This leads to a Certificate of Conformity that is renewed every 2 years with follow up testes just to make sure that our products are not going to endanger the human body.

The tests include the migration behavior of overall materials and specific materials including:

1. Melamine

2. Formaldehye

3. Silver (Ag)

4. Touluene Sulphonic Acid

5. Colour / Paint

The Certificate of Conformity confirms that:

"Thus, on the coated workplates maiCompact and maiLaminate according to the sample material submitted all kinds of foodstuffs may safely be prepared and treated, provided that hygiene regulations are not violated."

Advantages of Applications:

F&B outlets, hospitals canteen, factories canteen, kitchen, healthcare facilities, schools and colleges canteen, pantries, nursery and kindergarten.