The 17th session of the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food (CCCF) was declared officially open in Panama City, 15 April, following speeches from His Excellency the President of the Republic of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo Cohen and other distinguished guests. The opening ceremony paved the way for what promises to be an intensive week of discussions around a variety of current CCCF texts and future work for the Committee. His Excellency the President expressed appreciation that Panama was chosen to co-host [...]

In March 2024 in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, as part of the Action to support implementation of Codex AMR Texts (ACT) project plan to improve surveillance capacities in the country, a workshop was held in coordination with the country’s National Laboratories Unit (UNALAB) of the National Agricultural Health and Food Safety Service (SENASAG). Twelve professional bacteriologists working in the area of food safety and animal health from UNALAB Santa Cruz and UNALAB Cochabamba laboratories participated in the workshop, together [...]

A virtual “Codex ABC” training event was held on 3 and 5 April 2024 for the Latin America and Caribbean region (CCLAC), with the support of the Codex Secretariat and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), with translation into Spanish, English and French. More than 630 delegates from 27 countries of the region attended. The topics discussed were the principles of Codex and its importance in food safety, fair practices in the food trade and the elaboration of standards. [...]

The Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) Chairperson, Steve Wearne, delivered a “leadership talk” this week at the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) conference being held in Singapore, to offer “insights into the latest developments at Codex, exploring the intersection of technology, artificial intelligence (AI), innovation and climate change, and elaborate on future collaborative initiatives between GFSI and Codex.” In his talk, he highlighted the ways in which GFSI and Codex work towards a common goal of “bringing people together with a [...]

The Seventeenth Session of the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Foods (CCCF17) will take place 15–19 April 2024 in Panama City, Panama. As the meeting approaches, we spoke to Sally Hoffer, from the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, who will chair CCCF17 on behalf of The Netherlands, to find out more about the agenda of the Committee, co-hosting a Codex meeting and her expectations for this session.   Sally, thanks for your time. This is the fourth time for [...]

Under the theme “My health, my right”, this year’s World Health Day is championing “the right of everyone, everywhere to have access to quality health services, education, and information.” From a Codex perspective, the theme touches on many aspects of food standards setting work. The Codex Alimentarius itself is an open access resource of all the science-based information developed into standards, guidelines and codes of practice that support countries to ensure food produced both domestically and for export is safe [...]

On 8 March 2024, a monitoring workshop took place in Bogota, Colombia, to evaluate progress on addressing the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the food and agriculture sectors in the country.  The meeting was organized as part of the FAO-implemented and Republic of Korea-funded Action to support implementation of Codex AMR texts (ACT) project. Attendees were assessing improvements made since the start of the ACT project in 2021, and on the specific commitments made to combat the AMR threat. The [...]

Over the last few years, food safety has been prioritized across the African continent, as evidenced by, for example, its new African Union (AU) Food Safety Strategy 2022-2036, which was launched on World Food Safety Day 2022, and now Kenya’s leadership in the Codex Committee on Food Hygiene (CCFH) on new guidelines for food hygiene control measures in traditional markets for food. According to the African Union’s Food Safety Officer, John Oppong-Otoo, 70 percent of urban households in Africa rely [...]

Goal 3 of the Codex Strategic Plan 2020–2025 calls for increased impact through the recognition and use of Codex texts, including  the development of a mechanism to monitor the use and impact of Codex standards. The Codex surveys of 2022 and 2023 form the first part of this work. To collect more qualitative data that will feed into this M&E framework, a case study approach is now being deployed. A pilot case study for this phase will take place in Brazil [...]

This World Water Day is a good day to remind ourselves of the important work being done by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) to ensure this precious and increasingly scarce resource is used wisely within food production and processing. In 2023, CAC adopted the Guidelines for the Safe Use and Reuse of Water in Food Production and Processing (CXG 100-2023), which include new tools to help policymakers, food producers and processors determine when and how water can be safely reused within [...]