Abstract

Background: The recent food-borne microbial outbreaks in the world have led to the search for more innovative ways to inhibit microbial growth in foods that will maintain their quality, freshness, and safety. One of the options that provide an increased margin of safety and quality in food products is the use of antimicrobial packaging. Antimicrobial packaging is a form of active packaging, which interacts with the product or the headspace between the package and the food system, to obtain a desired outcome.

Methods: Different research papers, review papers, books, book chapters and other relevant literature were used for writing this comprehensive review paper. The idea from these bibliographic databases provides enough valuable information for writing this paper.

Results: More than 90 research articles were used to provide the enough information related to antimicrobial food packaging technologies. Many papers described the types of antimicrobial packaging and their properties. Various papers were described to assist the role antimicrobial packaging technologies in extending the shelf-life of foods and reduce the risk from pathogens. Various types of antimicrobial substances such as organic acids and their salts, enzymes, bacteriocins, and miscellaneous compounds (triclosan, silver, and fungicides) have been used in synthetic polymers and edible films which were described by number of bibliographic databases.

Conclusion: The findings of this review confirmed the importance of different types of antimicrobial food packaging systems that could be constructed by using antimicrobial packaging materials and/or antimicrobial agents inside the package space or inside foods that could inhibit the growth of spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms, and contribute to the improvement of food safety and the extension of shelf-life.

Keywords: Active packaging, antimicrobial packaging, bacteriocins, fungicides, minimally processed, triclosan.

Graphical Abstract