Plastic food packaging is intentionally not biological; that's what keeps the food from rotting.
[edit] We're not trying to set the food in epoxy for all eternity - like this hot dog for instance [1]
Why have packaging that last x10 as long as the food inside ?
If you're going to blame someone/something (in addition to the very consumers who demand this):
> Stores took advantage of it because it meant they could carry more inventory without worrying about rotting.
I watched a documentary recently that compared frozen food to internationally shipped food and found significant nutritional loss in the shipped "fresh" food. As such, I think plastic preserved apparently fresh food could be an explanation for part of the obesity rise. One potentially consumes more calories to get the other nutritional factors that have broken down compared to eating food that can only be delivered actually fresh.
(Given that improved shipping life also turns the market for a vegetable global, I also think more people are priced out of buying produce that once had to be sold locally than are helped by less produce waste in the richest market the produce can now reach.)
If it is just moisture, wax paper works reasonably well.
It's now typically coated in PTFE or some other non-stick surface which normally isn't great for health.