Comasec / Marigold Industrial

EC FOOD DIRECTIVE for food gloves

The parent directive EC/1935/2004 fixes general regulations for all materials intended to come into contact with foodstuffs. It stipulates that under normal conditions of use.

The materials used should not yield to food components in a quantity likely to present a danger to human health or to involve an unacceptable modification of the composition of the food products and there should be no deterioration of their organoleptic characters. The specific directives supplement the parent directive and apply to groups distinct from materials, there are seventeen categories in total:

        • Intelligent materials and articles,
    • Adhesives,
        • Metals and alloys,
        • Rubbers,
        • Ceramics,
        • Cork,
        • Glass,
        • Exchanging resins of ions,
        • Papers and paperboards,
        • Plastics,
        • Printing inks,
        • Regenerated celluloses,
        • Silicones,
        • Textiles,
        • Varnishes and coatings,
        • Waxes,
        • Wood.

The food gloves are governed by the directive specific to the Plastics category and its latest amendments. The food gloves should be manufactured with authorised substances listed in the directive and should also be tested for migration in order to evaluate the possible transfer of plastic materials from component to the foodstuffs. . In order to evaluate the transfer of components of plastic materials in contact with the foodstuffs, migration tests are carried out. The directive defines:

the limit of total migration fixed at 10mg/dm2, the glove should not yield beyond 10mg substances by dm2 of its surface with the foodstuffs
specific limit of migration which applies to certain substances and additives of the glove.

The foodstuffs are divided into four classes: aqueous food, acidic food, alcohols and fatty food. The food gloves can be tested for all four of the food classes or for an individual food class, according to their final use.

The gloves authorised for food handling must comprise the following pictogram:

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21 CFR is an American Regulation and refers to title 21 in the Code of Federal Regulations. This regulation only checks that the glove is not manufactured with non-authorised components. There is no migration tests done on the glove itself.

Skin reaction

People wearing natural rubber gloves and working in food environment can develop skin reactions either of mechanical irritation type (due to the friction of the skin with the glove) or of allergenic type (due to proteins of natural latex). Comasec® and Marigold Industrial® provide a range of low protein gloves approved for food use: Marigold Industrial® latex gloves undergo an extensive offline leaching process that reduces the levels of residual latex proteins and residual accelerators to as low a level as current technology allows. Comasec® and Marigold Industrial® also offer a range of gloves manufactured with other raw materials (nitrile, PVC, textile fibres…) compliant with food contact.