The Importance Of Active Packaging

Packaging is a medium between product manufacturers and consumers aiding the maintenance of original quality of the packaged products and providing information and characteristics of the packaged products to the consumers. Packaging has a significant role in the food supply chain because it is an integral part of food processes and food supply. The most important functions of packaging are retarding the deterioration of the value of food products, extend the shelf life, and maintain the quality and safety of the packaged foods. To increase the effectiveness of these functions of packaging, some active agents is incorporated into the packaging system. Active packaging creates a series of interactions between packaging materials, intrinsic atmosphere

Besides, basic functions of active packaging; antimicrobial packaging have closer relationship with food safety improvement. Antimicrobial packaging attracts more attention from the food and packaging industry because of the increasing demand for minimally processed preservative-free

Such materials are very effective against a broad spectrum of microorganisms and are widely used as antimicrobial agents. The antimicrobial activities exert via migration of the exchanging cations in organoclays and affect the bacteria as soluble antimicrobial agents. It appears that at least two mechanisms are responsible for the antimicrobial activity of the organoclays, i.e., activity of surfactants released from the clay and the action of the solid surface. The details of the mechanism of the latter have not yet been clarified, nonetheless intimate contacts between a bacterial cell and antimicrobial surface may be crucial to affect the cell (Gupta & Bhattacharya, 2008 ; Nigmatullin et al., 2008). Due to the frequency of polyethylene packaging, improving their mechanical and barrier properties enhance their current applications towards more sophisticated ones (Dadfar et al., 2011). For this purpose, several studies have been investigated and the results showed that incorporating organoclay with polymer matrixes such as PE or PP, enhance the mechanical and barrier characteristics, as well as antimicrobial properties, especially against E.coli and S.areuse of prepared nanocomposite films (Hong & Rhim, 2012; Lotti et al., 2008; Nigmatullin et al., 2008; Hotta & Paul, 2004; Durmus et al., 2007; Rhim, 2009; Minkova et al., 2009 and Sothornvit et al.,