6. The Committee noted that the Codex Alimentarius Commission at its 19th Session (1991) had agreed with the recommendation of the Joint FAO/WHO Conference on Food Standards, Chemicals in Food (March 1991) that existing Codex standards should be reviewed in order to simplify them and to make their acceptance by national governments easier, and had initiated the review of existing standards. It also noted that in the course of the review and revision of Codex standards, several Codex commodity committees had found that some or several standards elaborated by these committees shared the common provisions and had decided to elaborate more general standards to replace those existing standards and to cover wider range of commodities. As the current trend in Codex was to elaborate more horizontal and general standards as opposed to very specific and detailed ones, the Committee was encouraged to consider the elaboration of more general standards than the existing standards to cover as wide a range of products as appropriate and possible.
7. A majority of the delegations welcomed the idea of simplification of the existing standards and supported the elaboration of generalized standards such as a standard for stone fruits, provided that the aspects of food safety, consumer protection, facilitation of trade, and ensuring fair practices in trade were well covered by these standards. Advantages of this approach were the possibility to cover wider range of commodities with fewer standards and ease of accommodating new commodities as necessary. Several delegations stated that making references to Codex General Standards for the horizontal provisions would contribute greatly to the simplification of the standards. It was also stated that in redrafting the existing standards into generalized standards, the current international trade and technical development of the products concerned should be taken into consideration.
8. Some delegations proposed that the Committee should go even further to elaborate one standard for canned fruits and another for canned vegetables. However, some other delegations were of the opinion that a standard which was too general would not be practical and some specificities would still be required.
9. The Committee agreed to move toward the elaboration of more generalized standards for potential groups (see paras. 11, 44, 50, 63 & 66).
