The Codex Alimentarius shapes global food policy.
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The FAO’s food guidelines work as the foundation for policy around the world
What standard is used when countries are defining their food safety policies? When multinational companies such as Nestlé are developing products, what standards do they comply to?
The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Codex Alimentarius applies globally, both to national food safety policies and the products of multinationals.
What is the Codex Alimentarius?
The Codex Alimentarius, or ‘food code’, is a set of guidelines, standards, codes of practice and ‘miscellaneous texts’ aiming to protect consumer health and facilitate fair practice in the food trade.
The Codex Alimentarius contains a wide range of texts which relate to food commodities and food safety, explains a Codex Alimentarius secretariat spokesperson. These include many thousands of numerical levels for food additives, for contaminants, and for residues of pesticides and veterinary drugs. It also covers, more broadly, hygiene and labelling requirements.
These guidelines often form the basis of both policy and business. For example, one text on food safety management, broadly known is ‘HACCP’, is widely used by food businesses globally, and many countries have it written into their national legislation.
The standards within the Codex are set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), which has 188 member states and one member organisation (the European Union). A country can become a member if it’s a member of either the FAO or the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Is the Codex Alimentarius mandatory?
The FAO’s guidelines are strictly voluntary, explains the person, although they can become mandatory if written into national legislation.
However, World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules do encourage members to harmonise national regulations to such international standards. The WTO’s sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement specifically identifies Codex standards as the international benchmark to food safety, meaning that national regulations compliant with them are considered to meet this agreement. Codex standards can be referenced in a food trade dispute.
If WTO-member countries want to legislate standards more rigorous than those of the Codex, they may be asked for scientific justification.
How often is it updated?
Members of the commission, according to the FAO person, continually make sure that it remains up to date, based on evolving science and the work of the FAO and WHO.
“It is thus up to Members to identify the need to update Codex texts as new scientific or other relevant information becomes available.
“[The Commission] meets every year to discuss the work that has been agreed within the Codex subsidiary committees that have met over that year. That work may involve the development of a new text, or it may involve the revision of an existing text. If [the Commission] agrees with the work that has been sent to it by those committees, the new text, or the revision, will then be added to the Codex Alimentarius.”
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