The Office of the Under Secretary for Food Safety, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration have announced an April 25, 2011, public meeting in College Park, Maryland, to provide information and receive public comments on draft U.S. positions to be discussed at the 39th session of the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) on May 9-13 in Quebec City, Canada. CCFL is responsible for such things as “studying problems associated with the advertisement of food with particular reference to claims and misleading descriptions for drafting provisions on labeling applicable to all foods.” Agenda items include (i) “recommendations on the declaration of sodium (salt)”; (ii) “mandatory nutrition labeling”; (iii) “labeling of foods and food ingredients obtained through certain techniques of genetic modification/ genetic engineering”; and (iv) “modified standardized common names.” See Federal Register, April 1, 2011. In a related matter, a public meeting was held April 5…
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The Codex Committee on Methods of Analysis and Sampling has reportedly endorsed guidelines providing regulators and the dairy industry a standard reference for testing melamine in dairy products, including powdered infant formula. Developed by the International Dairy Federation (IDF) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in the wake of a melamine contamination scandal in China that purportedly sickened thousands of young children, the guidelines represent an internationally harmonized procedure that will allow authorities to determine if levels of melamine in dairy products exceed the Codex maximum level of 1 mg melamine per kg of product. The Codex Alimentarius Commission will consider the committee’s endorsement and vote on the guidelines’ adoption in July 2011. The guidelines, titled “ISO/TS 15495 IDF/RM 230:2010, Milk, milk products and infant formulae—Guidelines for the quantitative determination of melamine and cyanuric acid by LC-MS/MS,” reportedly provide advice about sampling, test procedures and performance with examples of…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of the Under Secretary for Food Safety, and the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition have announced a March 16, 2011, public meeting in College Park, Maryland, to provide information and receive public comments on draft U.S. positions to be discussed at the 31st session of the Codex Committee on Contaminants on Fish and Fishery Products (CCFFP) on April 11-16 in Tromso, Norway. CCFFP “is responsible for elaborating worldwide standards for fresh, frozen (including quick frozen) or otherwise processed fish, crustaceans, and mollusks.” Agenda items include proposed draft standards for fish sauce, smoked fish, smoke-flavored fish, and smoke dried fish; proposed draft codes of practice for fish and fishery products and scallop-meat processing; proposed methods for determining biotoxins in raw and live bivalve mollusks; and proposed revisions to food-additive standards for fish and fishery products. See Federal…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, Office of the Under Secretary for Food Safety, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have announced a February 22, 2011, public meeting in College Park, Maryland, to provide information and receive public comments on draft U.S. positions to be discussed at the 5th session of the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Foods (CCCF) on March 21-25 in The Hague, The Netherlands. Among other things, CCCF “establishes or endorses permitted maximum levels of contaminants, and where necessary revises existing guidelines for contaminants and naturally occurring toxicants in food and feed.” Agenda items include proposed draft maximum levels for melamine in liquid infant formula, deoxynivalenol and its acetylated derivatives in cereals and cereal-based products, and total aflaxtoxins in dried figs. Topics for discussion papers include mycotoxins in sorghum, arsenic in rice, ochratoxin A in cocoa, and furan. See Federal Register, February…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the Office of the Under Secretary for Food Safety have announced a February 9, 2011, public meeting in College Park, Maryland, to provide information and receive public comments on draft U.S. positions to be discussed at the 22nd session of the Codex Committee on Fats and Oils (CCFO) on February 21-25 in Penang, Malaysia. CCFO “is responsible for elaborating worldwide standards for fats and oils of animal, vegetable, and marine origin, including margarine and olive oil.” Agenda items include (i) “Draft Amendment to the Standard for Named Vegetable Oils; Inclusion of Palm Kernel Olein and Palm Kernel Stearin”; (ii) “Code Practice for the Storage and Transport of Edible Fats and Oils in Bulk”; (iii) “Proposed Draft Amendment to the Standard for Olive Oils and Olive Pomace Oils: Linolenic Acid Level”; (iv) “Proposal for New Work on a Standard for…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has announced an October 13, 2010, public meeting in College Park, Maryland, to provide information and receive public comments on draft U.S. positions to be discussed at the 32nd Session of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) on November 1-5 in Santiago, Chile. The meeting will address a discussion paper on the “Inclusion of New Part B for Underweight Children in the Standard for Processed Cereal-Based Foods for Infants and Young Children.” Other agenda items will include (i) proposed revision of “Codex General Principles for the Addition of Essential Nutrients to Foods”, (ii) proposed revision to the “Guidelines on Formulated Supplementary Foods for Older Infants and Young Children”, and (iii) “Proposed Draft Nutrient Reference Values for Nutrients Associated with Risk of Diet-Related Noncommunicable Diseases for General Population.” See Federal Register, October 1, 2010. FSIS…
The U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced that as of September 1, 2010, the agency handed over several responsibilities to the departments of Health (DH) and Environmental, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Under the restructuring—which does not currently apply to operations to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—FSA in England will continue to handle the following safety aspects of food labeling: (i) “expert scientific advice on the food safety aspects of date marking”; (ii) “assessment and labeling of ingredients/foods with food safety implications (e.g. allergens, glycols, high caffeine, high glycyrrhizinic acid)”; (iii) “food safety aspects of organic food and of foods controlled by compositional standards”; (iv) “treatments and conditions of use with food safety implications (e.g. quick frozen foods, raw drinking milk and pasteurisation, food contact materials)”; (v) “GM and novel foods (including use of nanotechnology)”; (vi) “animal feed, including Codex Intergovernmental Task Force on Animal Feeding”; (vii) “food safety…
In advance of the August 30-September 3, 2010, session of the Codex Committee on Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Foods, draft U.S. positions will be considered during a public meeting scheduled for August 16. Written comments may be presented during the meeting or forwarded to the U.S. delegate to the Codex session, Dr. Kevin Greenlees, who works in the Office of New Animal Drug Evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Among other issues on the upcoming Codex agenda are (i) draft maximum residue limits for veterinary drugs (at step seven of an eight-step Codex process), (ii) a discussion paper on methods of analysis for these residues in foods, (iii) a draft priority list of veterinary drugs requiring evaluation by a joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Health Organization (WHO) expert committee on food additives, (iv) a discussion paper on veterinary drugs in honey production, and (v) a discussion…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has announced the 33rd Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission slated for July 5-9, 2010, in Geneva, Switzerland. FSIS seeks public comments before the meeting on “those standards that are currently under consideration or planned for consideration and recommendations for new standards.” The standards that will be put forward for approval during the commission meeting include those concerned with food contaminants, additives, pesticide residues, analysis and sampling methods, import and export inspections, labeling, hygiene, fish and fishery products, milk and milk products, fats and oils, and processed fruits and vegetables. Also slated for consideration in Geneva is the status of the Codex Strategic Plan, the impact of private standards and the management of the “Trust Fund for the Participation of Developing Countries and Countries in Transition in the Work of the Codex Alimentarius.” Before the general commission meeting, the Codex…
A coalition of groups representing farmers, public health, environmental, and organic food interests has submitted a comment to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeking changes to the draft position on labeling genetically modified (GM) products that the U.S. Codex delegate plans to bring to the May 3-7, 2010, meeting of the Codex Committee on Food Labeling. The coalition calls for the U.S. delegate to support “a Codex document that simply states that countries can adopt different approaches to labeling of GM/GE foods, in line with existing Codex guidance.” According to the April 20 letter, the current U.S. position opposing that document “could potentially create significant problems for food producers in the US who wish to indicate that their products contain no GE ingredients, including on organic food, where genetic engineering is a prohibited method.” The signatories, including the Consumers Union, Union of Concerned…
