Last year, with the support of the Codex Trust Fund, Mauritius developed a National Codex Manual, a Standard Operating Procedure for a transparent standard-setting procedure and also organized an extensive training programme on the Codex process in which a mock Codex session was also facilitated.

Mauritius has now embarked on yet another milestone for harmonizing National food standards with those of Codex. A training programme on implementation of a strategy for this purpose was conducted today in Port Louis at the initiative of the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security (MAIFS), and WHO. The National Codex Contact Point (NCCP) is located under this Ministry. There were more than 70 participants from different Ministries and Departments, Academic institutions as well as food businesses. The Minister of MAIFS, Mr Mahen Kumar Seeruttun opened the meeting. He emphasized the need for aligning national food standards with Codex to ensure the safety of consumer health and a level playing field at the global level for better market access. The WHO representative in Mauritius, Dr Anne-Marie Ancia also addressed the participants. Dr Shalini Neeliah, the NCCP, is spear-heading implementation of the harmonization strategy.

The training was conducted by Sanjay Dave, former Codex Chairperson during which he explained the step-by-step process of implementation of the strategy followed by a mechanism to apply a transparent process for notifying science-based standards in a WTO compatible manner. A total of 20 Working Groups were agreed upon (8 for vertical standards and 12 for horizontal standards). Individual meetings of each of these working groups have already started and will be completed over this week to finalize the modalities and timelines such that all the working groups are able to submit their proposals to the government by mid-December 2024.

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