Codex Committee on Food Labelling to meet in Canada
Wednesday 21 March 2007
The Codex Committee on Food Labelling (CCFL), which is responsible for drawing up internationally-agreed standards and codes of practice, will be held in Ottawa, Canada, from 30 April – 4 May 2007.
The session ' the committee's 35th ' is being convened under the authority of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which implements the Joint Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) Food Standards Programme, and is open to Member Nations and Associate Members of both Organisations and to observers.
The Codex Alimentarius is a collection of internationally-adopted food standards, codes of practice, guidelines and recommendations. They have been created for the purpose of protecting the health of consumers and ensuring fair practices in the food trade. Although these standards do not have statutory force, an increasing number of countries align their food standards with Codex following WHO agreements that say that Codex standards are favoured in international trade disputes.
The provisional Agenda for the 35th session includes:
- Consideration of labelling provisions in draft Codex standards
- Guidelines for the production, processing, labelling and marketing of organically produced foods
- Labelling of foods and food ingredients obtained through techniques of genetic modification/genetic engineering
- General standard for the labelling of pre-packaged foods (quantitative declaration of ingredients)
- Discussion paper on advertising in relation to nutrition and health claims
- Modified standardized common names
The agenda for the 35th meeting can be found at the link below.