Page 17 - Trade and Food Standards

participation of 188 members representing over 99 percent of the world’s population.
For over five decades, Codex texts have contributed to the safety and quality of the food we eat. The Codex Alimentarius forms a global rule book that everyone in the food chain can follow. At the same time, the Codex Alimentarius Commission’s intricate but open and participatory standard-setting procedure – gathering together nations to deliberate science-based evidence side by side – also plays an important role in strengthening national food-safety control systems.
Codex texts
Codex standards, guidelines and codes of practice are advisory in nature: to become legally enforceable, countries must voluntarily translate them into national legislation or regulations. All Codex texts are freely available on the Codex website and can be accessed by anyone.
Codex commodity standards define the physical and chemical characteristics of nearly 200 traded
products – from apples and wheat to frozen fish and bottled water.
Codex guidelines, for example, on food labelling enable communication between the producer and vendor of food on the one hand, and the purchaser and consumers on the other.
A code of practice on, for example, food hygiene, describes the controls necessary along the food chain – from primary production through to final consumption – so that everyone, including farmers, growers, manufacturers, processors, food handlers and consumers, can take responsibility for ensuring that food is safe and suitable for consumption.
The Codex general standard for contaminants lists the maximum levels and associated sampling plans of contaminants and natural toxicants in food and feed that are safe for commodities subject to international trade.
The Codex database on food additives includes the conditions and maximum limits within which permitted food additives may be used in all foods.
Codex standards, guidelines and codes of practice, applied together, ensure food is safe. In the case of a milk product, for example, the task begins with the animal and how it is reared – the feed and medicines it is given – then continues with defining how the processes to collect, transport and store the milk must be designed and monitored to ensure its safety. When the milk is processed, hygienic processes and sufficient checks need to be in place to ensure that harmful bacteria and other contaminants are controlled, minimized and kept within safe levels, while nutritional characteristics and the taste, look, smell and texture of the product remain intact.
If the milk is to be transported and perhaps transformed into another product, then it must be tracked and labelled at each phase.
If the product is for export, it will have to meet international standards and regulations, in addition to the needs of consumers.
When consumers taste that glass of milk, it will be the safety of the product together with their enjoyment of its expected quality and overall satisfaction that dictate whether they continue to purchase the product.
Codex, invisible to consumers, is vital for all other actors from farm to fork along the food chain, helping to ensure that your glass of milk is safe and can be traded across borders.
Codex in action
Source: Codex Secretariat
Part 1. The institutional framework 5
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