The FAO-implemented and Republic of Korea-funded Action to support implementation of Codex AMR Texts (ACT) project aims at “increased recognition and use of Codex standards”. In the Latin America and Caribbean region, one of the activities designed to help achieve this objective is a webinar series which has been devised to increase awareness on Codex standards and associated opportunities and challenges, and topics of interest for the Latin American and the Caribbean region.

The sixth webinar in the series  took place in April, with as many as 190 participants. The series is co-organized by the Phyto and Zoosanitary Regulation and Control Agency of Ecuador (AGROCALIDAD), the regional coordinator for the  FAO/WHO Coordinating Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean (CCLAC), and the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (FAO RLC).

The webinar in April was about contaminants in fisheries and aquaculture, and saw panellists from the public, private and academic sectors contribute with regional experiences on this issue. Contaminants emerged as a top priority in a regional survey that was undertaken to inform the development of the webinar series and in recognition of the importance of this topic, it will also be the focus of the keynote address at CCLAC23 which meets in July this year. The webinar addressed  the implementation of relevant Codex standards according to the needs of the countries of the region as well as considering obstacles to their implementation.

Contributors included Carla Asunción Villena, Deputy Director of the Sub-Directorate of Food Safety, SANIPES, Peru, Paola Calle Delgado, Director of the Toxicological Research and Environmental Health Laboratory, of the Escuela Politécnica del Litoral, Ecuador and Jose Miguel Burgos, Advisor to Acuestudios and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH)’s Reference Center of the Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences of the University of Chile.

During the webinar, Burgos reviewed the general concepts of what is meant by “contaminant”, how countries protect their populations through national regulations and how to determine the impact of a contaminant on health. He then provided examples from the Chilean context. “Countries and their regulations must ensure that the food that is marketed is safe for consumption and does not have contaminants that could endanger the health of people or animals,” he said. “Therefore, one of the fundamental objectives of food legislation is to ensure an adequate level of public health protection.”

Villena described SANIPES’ mission as the entity in charge of food safety along the entire aquaculture and fishing production chain and the relevant official control programmes of the organization. She talked about Peru’s work to control contaminants and to strengthen the country’s regulatory framework, national control programmes, technical capacities and collaborations with national and international academic and scientific institutions, and ways to improve scientific research in priority areas.

Calle talked about research projects associated with the contamination of ecosystems and how this contamination affects related biota, in addition to the impacts on the health of consumers. “It is important to study the bioaccumulation and biomagnification of contaminants in the trophic chain in order to develop public policies that protect ecosystems and thus the consumption of safe products,” she said.

To date, the webinar series has addressed the following topics (see links below):

Module 1: Guide and orientation for new Codex Alimentarius participants (December 14 and 15, 2022),

Module 2: Basic Codex texts (December 7, 2022),

Module 3: Future Food Safety Challenges (April 28, 2023),

Module 4: Application of Codex - Regional Experiences (July 7, 2023),

Module 5: Food Safety under the One Health Approach (November 17, 2023).

The series of virtual seminars will be transmitted between 2022 and 2025 to the entire Latin American and Caribbean region, in Spanish and English

Learn more

Watch the webinars

English: https://www.fao.org/americas/events/event-detail/webinar-series-for-capacity-building-on-codex-topics/en
Spanish: https://www.fao.org/americas/events/event-detail/webinar-series-for-capacity-building-on-codex-topics/es

Codex pages on contaminants