ABSTRACT
Consumers, food companies, and governments all want to raise the quality level of food products to a higher extent. The new generation of food products needs to be more appealing, tastier, made with fresher ingredients, but most importantly healthy and safe. Therefore, the food industry aims to develop products that have a high nutritional density, are based on high-quality and fresh ingredients, contain natural antioxidants like spice and herb extracts, and contain less salt and synthetic preservatives. To meet the growing consumer demand for safer and better quality food products with a fresh and natural (green) image, new and novel packaging technologies or materials have been and continue to be developed (Cutter, 2006). Bioactive packaging technologies for extended shelf-life raw or precooked products have become one of the major areas of research in food packaging. Of these active packaging systems, the antimicrobial version is of great importance (Coma, 2008).
