It was called food grade
On this page11
The phrase was used as a quality claim
Food grade is not a grade in the sense of better or worse. It describes a material permitted for food contact under the section that covers its polymer family.
The colour was not considered
Colorants are adjuvant substances and compliance covers the polymer and the additives together. A dyed container is a different formulation from a natural one.
A clean used bucket was treated as equivalent
Washing does not change which adjuvants were compounded into the resin, and it does not remove what a polyolefin wall absorbed.
A food-grade container was assumed to be taint-free
It is still a polyolefin and it still takes up odour. Compliance and absorption are two different facts about the same bucket.
The wrong section was assumed to apply
Polyethylene and polypropylene fall under the olefin polymers section. PET falls under the polyethylene phthalate section, with its own conditions. They are not interchangeable.
Temperature conditions were ignored
The olefin section references conditions of use by food type and temperature. A material permitted for a cold dry good is not thereby permitted for a hot fill.
Nobody asked for documentation
Food-contact compliance is a statement a manufacturer makes about a specific resin. If it exists, somebody can produce it; if nobody can, that is the answer.
And we do not make the claim either
We publish material and capacity and we do not hold that documentation, so nothing on this shelf is described as food grade by us.
Which is the useful thing a catalog can say
Here is the resin, here is the capacity, and here are the two questions to ask whoever made it. That is more help than a badge.
And for the long-term assembly, buy from a specialist
Buckets, mylar, absorbers and gamma lids from somebody who sells them as a system and can document the first one. We are not that supplier and this property says so on its first page.