75. On the request of the Fourth Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the Secretariat of the Commission prepared a paper on packaging materials, outlining the subject. The Commission noted that the Council of Europe (Partial Agreement) had established a Working Party to deal with the control of packaging materials. The Commission agreed with the conclusions of the Codex Committee on Food Additives that before packaging materials were considered, a large amount of preliminary work would have to be done on compiling information for consideration by a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee.
76. The Commission then examined the priority which should be given to the consideration of this subject. In view of the fact that the existing Expert Committees and the Codex Committees still had a number of classes of food additives, contaminants and pesticide residues with high priority to consider, the Commission decided that no action should be taken at this time, and that the outcome of the investigations of the Working Party of the Council of Europe should be awaited before further action was taken on this subject. The Commission was of the opinion that meanwhile the Secretariat of FAO and WHO should collect data on the migration of packaging material components into food and on the toxicity of the substances migrating.
