132. The Commission considered ALINORM 70/37 which contained government comments on a paper entitled “The Idea of a General Standard” which had been prepared by the delegation of the United Kingdom to the Codex Committee on General Principles.
133. A number of delegations said that they were in the process of drafting the general provisions of their food law and international agreement on the necessary general provisions would be helpful. It was pointed out that without such general provisions there would be a lacuna in the Codex Alimentarius, but that the differences in the legal structure in different countries would make it very difficult to accept the precise wording of any general standard. It might be better to regard the proposal as a general indication of the provisions which should appear in any food law, to which Member Governments should be invited to express agreement in principle.
134. The Commission decided that further work should be done on the General Standard without taking any decision as to whether it should finally take the form of a Codex Standard or a code of practice or a general preamble to Codex standards.
135. The delegation of the United Kingdom undertook to revise the draft standard in the light of the comments received, and to prepare a paper which would include this redraft, together with any government comments for revision which had been taken account of in the revised draft. It would also reconsider those points of the paper on the General Principles of Food Legislation prepared by the French Secretariat for the First Session of the Codex Committee on General Principles (ALINORM 65/9) which had not been taken account of in the revised standard. The United Kingdom should submit the paper to the Secretariat so that it might be circulated for government comments at Step 3 of the Procedure. In the light of the comments received, the Secretariat, in consultation with the United Kingdom, should advise the Commission how it should proceed with the standard and in particular whether it should deal with Steps 4 and 5 itself or whether a further session of the General Principles Committee was required to deal with Step 4. It should also advise on whether the standard should be proceeded with as a Codex standard, a code of practice or as a preamble to the Codex Alimentarius.
