1. In order:
to ensure that the work of the codex committee concerned is not made less valuable by the passage of an insufficiently considered amendment in the commission;
at the same time to provide scope for significant amendments to be raised and considered in the commission;
to prevent, as far as practicable, lengthy discussion in the commission on points that have been thoroughly argued in the codex committee concerned;
to ensure, as far as practicable, that delegations are given sufficient warning of amendments so that they may brief themselves adequately,
amendments to codex standards at step 8 should, as far as practicable, be submitted in writing, although amendments proposed in the commission would not be excluded entirely, and the following procedure should be employed:
2. When codex standards are distributed to Member countries prior to their consideration by the commission at step 8, the secretariat will indicate the date by which proposed amendments must be received; this date will be fixed so as to allow sufficient time for such amendments to be in the hands of governments not less than one month before the session of the commission.
3. Governments should submit amendments in writing by the date indicated and should state that they had been previously submitted to the appropriate codex committee with details of the submission of the amendment or should give the reason why the amendment had not been proposed earlier, as the case may be.
4. When amendments are proposed during a session of the commission, without prior notice, to a standard which is at step 8, the chairman of the commission, after consultation with the chairman of the appropriate committee, or, if the chairman is not present, with the delegate of the chairing country, or, in the case of subsidiary bodies which do not have a chairing country, with other appropriate persons, shall rule whether such amendments are substantive.
5. If an amendment ruled as substantive is agreed to by the commission, it shall be referred to the appropriate codex committee for its comments and, until such comments have been received and considened by the commission, the standard shall not be advanced beyond step 8 of the procedure.
