Packaging is sometimes seen as the last step in production after the critical food safety work is complete. In reality, it functions as a primary food safety control — once a product leaves processing, packaging is what protects it from contamination, environmental exposure, tampering, and physical damage throughout transport and storage.
Unfortunately, this is also the point in the manufacturing process where preventable failures frequently occur. Packaging and labeling errors accounted for 45.5% of food recalls in 2024, which cost the industry $1.92 billion. Despite Listeria contamination often dominating headlines, these recalls were three times less common than label- and packaging-related recalls.
All too often, leaders treat food packaging as a marketing or logistics component rather than a food safety control. Read on as we explore common packaging-related risks and the practical steps your facility can take to maintain product integrity after processing.
The Impacts of Food Packaging Failures
Under FSMA Preventive Controls, packaging-related hazards such as foreign material, chemical migration, seal failure, and mislabeling must be evaluated and managed as part of a facility’s hazard analysis.
Food packaging failures bypass every upstream control, so the stakes are high. Unlike processing errors that may trigger alarms or lab flags, food packaging issues often remain undetected until products reach distribution or retail. When this happens, facilities face:
- Regulatory reclassification of the product: If food packaging allows contamination or the label does not accurately reflect the product inside, the product may be designated as adulterated or misbranded, even when the underlying formulation and processing were correct.
- Increased likelihood of a Class I recall: Because food packaging is the final barrier preventing contamination and incorrect labeling before distribution, failures at this stage often result in high-severity recalls because the product is close to reaching or has already reached the marketplace.
- Consumer concern and loss of confidence: Food packaging is one of the first things consumers evaluate when deciding whether a product is safe to consume. A dented seal, a shifted label, or a package that appears tampered with can cause consumers to discard the product, contact retailers, or share complaints publicly.
- Strain on retailer, distributor, and partner relationships: Retailers closely monitor customer complaints and supplier performance. A pattern of packaging-related issues can lead to increased oversight, mandatory corrective action plans, tighter specifications, or, in more serious cases, product removal or supplier suspension.
5 Common Packaging-Related Food Safety Hazards
Most packaging-related food safety issues arise not from the materials themselves, but from how they’re stored, handled, and applied on the line. These are some of the most common food safety risks associated with compromised packaging processes:
1. Physical Contaminants
Food packaging materials that are damaged, worn, or incorrectly handled can introduce foreign material into products. These may originate from packaging stock itself (e.g., film or seal tearing, brittle plastic fragments) or wear from packaging-line equipment (e.g., metal shavings from worn conveyor parts or plastic debris from misaligned crimpers).
2. Chemical Migration
Certain food packaging components can migrate into food under specific conditions, like ink from printed labels leaching into oily sauces or adhesives softening during high-temperature retort processes. This risk increases in products that are hot-filled or retorted, high-fat (fats act as solvents for many compounds), highly acidic, or stored for extended periods.
3. Microbiological Contamination
Packaging isn’t always classified as a direct food-contact surface during storage, but once it enters the production area, it functions as one. If food packaging is stored or transported improperly, it can introduce mold spores, pathogens, pest contamination, or dirt and other environmental debris.
4. Allergen Cross-Contact
Food packaging is also a potential vector for allergen transfer. Risks increase when:
- Bulk bins, totes, or liners are shared across product types.
- Packaging equipment is not fully cleaned between runs.
- Materials are stored in shared locations with allergen-containing products.
In 2024, 84% of label and packaging errors stemmed from undeclared allergens. This makes packaging-related allergen control a higher-impact intervention point than many in-process controls.
5. Tampering and Adulteration
If packaging does not include tamper-evident features, the product is more vulnerable to intentional interference during storage, distribution, or retail display. Tamper-evident designs support consumer confidence and also play an important role in food defense, helping facilities meet regulatory expectations for preventing both economically motivated and malicious adulteration.
How to Protect Your Product From Food Packaging Failures
Once teams start viewing packaging as a food safety control, it becomes easier to identify where failures can occur and how to prevent them. Use these tips to ensure your team has embedded the right checks in everyday production practices.
Conduct packaging risk assessments across the production environment
Every point where food packaging touches the product is a potential source of contamination or misapplication. Reviewing the entire packaging path — from storage and line setup to sealing and palletizing — helps identify where mix-ups, damage, or exposure are most likely to happen.
These risk points should be documented and built into preventive control verification, just as you would with other critical control areas on the line.
Validate food packaging materials for the product and its processing conditions
Packaging that performs well for one product may not be suitable for another. Again, heat, acidity, fat content, and expected shelf life all influence whether inks, coatings, or polymers remain stable. Confirming that packaging materials are appropriate for your specific product and process, and periodically re-validating those assumptions, minimizes the risk of chemical migration or structural failure later in distribution.
Strengthen packaging storage and handling practices
Before packaging ever reaches the line, it must be handled like a food-contact surface. Packaging stored in humid, dusty, or pest-accessible areas increases the risk of microbiological contamination. Even clean materials can become compromised through improper stacking, floor contact, or exposure to allergen residues in shared storage.
Controlled storage, clean handling, and FIFO rotation help ensure the material arriving at the line is in the condition you expect. It's helpful to include regular internal audits and pest control inspections in storage areas in the control plan to reinforce good practices.
That said, because visual inspection at the point of use rarely catches microbial or allergen contamination, preventing exposure during storage is the most reliable control.
Incorporate label and seal verification into the routine workflow
Label errors and seal failures are among the most common causes of Class I recalls, which means verification checks should be built into the line’s normal rhythm. This includes confirming that the correct label version is applied at startup, periodically verifying label-to-product matches during long runs, and routinely checking seal integrity.
Ensure employee training emphasizes packaging as a food safety control
Frontline staff make the majority of real-time packaging decisions on the line. When they understand how packaging affects allergen declarations, contamination control, and regulatory compliance, they are more likely to identify minor concerns before they become larger issues.
Protecting Product Integrity With Expert Training from AIB International
When food packaging performs as intended, it preserves the work your team has already done to control hazards and maintain compliance. When it fails, the consequences can be immediate, highly visible, and difficult to reverse.
But understanding the role of packaging in food safety is only the first step. Packaging conditions, material specifications, and regulatory expectations can change over time — for example, due to phase-outs of PFAS grease-proofing agents. That’s why it’s important to periodically validate and re-evaluate packaging materials, even when suppliers or specifications appear consistent on paper.
Managing this effectively requires coordination across production, quality, and procurement teams. Shared practices for how packaging is selected, stored, handled, and verified on the line can meaningfully reduce the risk of label errors, seal failures, and post-process contamination.
If your team is ready to strengthen food packaging practices through guided support, AIB International’s Product Protection for Packaging Manufacturers Series offers a focused training path to help you build and maintain strong, reliable packaging controls.
