Editing Food irradiation (section)

=== Packaging ===
For some forms of treatment, packaging is used to ensure the food stuffs never come in contact with radioactive substances<ref name="sterigenics">{{Cite web| url = http://www.sterigenics.com/services/food_safety/food_irradiation__questions_answers.pdf |title=Food Irradiation: Questions & Answers|archive-date=18 November 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20171118182506/http://www.sterigenics.com/services/food_safety/food_irradiation__questions_answers.pdf }}</ref> and prevent re-contamination of the final product.<ref name="FI" /> Food processors and manufacturers today struggle with using affordable, efficient packaging materials for irradiation-based processing. The implementation of irradiation on prepackaged foods has been found to impact foods by inducing specific chemical alterations to the food packaging material that migrates into the food. [[Cross-link]]ing in various plastics can lead to physical and chemical modifications that can increase the overall molecular weight. On the other hand, [[chain scission]] is fragmentation of polymer chains that leads to a [[molecular mass]] reduction.<ref name=fda/>