Mr. Kermode, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to thank you, Mr. Kermode, for having opened, on behalf of the Directors-General of FAO and WHO, the Fifteenth Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission. I have listened with great interest to what you have said, and I am sure the Commission has also.
Like Mr. Kermode, I too wish to extend a warm welcome to all participants of this anniversary session, particularly to those who are participating at a session of the Commission for the first time. I am very pleased to note that we have with us for the first time a delegation from the People's Republic of China. China is not entirely a stranger to Codex work, because it sent delegations to the recent sessions of the Codex Committee on Food Additives and the Codex Committee on Pasticide Residues. For the time being, the People's Republic of China is participating in the capacity of an observer, but I do hope it will not be long before China decides to become a Member of the Commission.
The first session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission was held in Rome 20 years ago-in July 1963. The session was attended by 30 countries and 16 international organizations, with a total participation of some 120 persons. About twice that number of countries and international organizations and more than three times the number of participants will attend the current session. Membership of the Commission has increased equally spectacularly from some 30 countries in 1963 to 122 countries in 1983. These facts clearly point to the continued and growing interest throughout the world in the work of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, covering now more than three-quarters of the members of the United Nations.
Looking back over the past 20 years, one can say that the early years of the Commission were largely devoted to developing the rules of procedure of the Commission, the general principles of the Codex Alimentarius, the establishment of the Commission's many technical subsidiary bodies to carry out its programme of work, and the establishment of the Commission's working procedures, including the procedures for the elaboration of its standards. In short, the Commission established what I would call a very firm foundation for the pursuit of its work, with clear working procedures acceptable to all.
The first standards were adopted by the Commission in 1968. Since then the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its subsidiary bodies have developed close on 190 international standards and some 40 codes of practice, guidelines and other texts covering a very wide range of food products moving in international trade. In addition, a great number of international maximum limits for pesticide residues have also been developed and, like the standards, have been sent to governments for acceptance. Many specifications for the identity and purity of food additives have been approved by the Commission. In the area of food chemicals, the Commission has published a Guide to the Safe Use of Food Additives, a Guide to Codex Maximum Limits for Pesticide Residues and a List of Recommended Maximum Levels for Contaminants in Food - publications which, of course, need to be revised and up-dated from time to time. A Code of Ethics for International Trade in Food aimed at preventing countries which do not yet have adequate food control infrastructures from being the recipients of hazardous, or falsely labelled, or otherwise sub-standard food products, has been published by the Commission and sent to governments for consideration with a view to implementation. We shall, as you know, be discussing this subject under a specific agenda item during the course of the Session. The Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, which was adopted by the World Health Assembly, contains several references to the technical work of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in the area of standards for foods for infants and children. Likewise the GATT Code on Technical Barriers to Trade makes specific reference to the recommendations of the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
The Commission's mandate is not only to develop standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations. According to its statutes, the Commission has also been entrusted with the task of promoting the coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations. The considerable number of seventy-seven international organizations is contained in a paper before the Commission, as being of direct interest to the Commission's task of coordination of food standards work. This, I think, demonstrates clearly, besides other things, that the Codex Alimentarius Commission is the leading institution in the world in the field of food standards and related work.
There is no doubt but that the Commission has produced a tremendous amount of material and recommendations of interest to governments and industry. Although most of the technical expertise has been and continues to be provided by the delegations themselves who participate in Codex Committee Sessions, a great deal of the expertise has also been provided by the very large number of international bodies and organizations specialized in various technical fields which collaborate with the Commission. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge their contribution to the development of the Commission's recommendations and to thank them for their cooperation.
The standards, codes of practice and other texts of the Codex Alimentarius Commission constitute a sound basis for national food legislation everywhere and should be of particular value to developing countries which are building up their national food laws. But there is also, in my opinion, a considerable “pioneering aspect” to the work of the Commission. Many countries and, indeed, economic groupings look to see what is happening in Codex fora on topics of major current interest before adopting or revising national or community laws. Examples of such topics are the current work of revising the General Standard for the Labelling of Prepackaged Foods, the work on date-marking, the work on nutrition labelling and fortification of foods, and the work on vegetable proteins and food irradiation.
Although the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its different kinds of subsidiary bodies - there are 27 subsidiary bodies in all - assisted by the specialized knowledge and technical recommendations of several expert committees, is quite a complex structure, still it has proved itself to be very adaptable to changing needs and circumstances. The wide variety of product standards developed over the years reflect the wishes of the Commission at various points in time.
In recent years the Commission decided to place increased emphasis on the needs and concerns of developing countries. Two new Codex Committees - the Codex Committee on Cereals, Pulses and Legumes and the Codex Committee on Vegetable Proteins- were established. The work of these two Committees should be of particular interest to developing countries from the point of view of trade and nutrition. You can also see from the agendas and reports of other Codex Committees the increased emphasis on standards and codes of practice for products of interest to developing countries, such as, for example, tropical vegetable oils, tropical fruits and tropical fruit juices, foods for infants and children, groundnuts, smoked and salted fish, frog legs, wheat flour, maize grains, and sorghum and millet. Moreover, the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues has established a special working Group to deal with the problems of developing countries.
There have been shifts of emphasis also as regards the procedure for the elaboration and amendment of standards. The procedure has now been shortened and streamlined in order to reduce the amount of time it takes to develop a standard. This was done by the Commission in response initially to views expressed by the Coordinating Committee for Asia. It is important to note that the procedure was shortened without, however, reducing the opportunities for adequate consideration by government and industry of the standards, whilst they are still in draft form.
Another change in the procedure for the elaboration of standards was the inclusion of safeguards to protect the economic interests of the member countries. If there are any provisions in a draft standard which give rise to concern in any country from the point of view of economic implications, the country concerned has the opportunity, at several stages in the elaboration procedure, to submit its comments on the economic implications to the Codex Committee developing the standard or to the Commission, whichever is appropriate. The revised Guidelines for Codex Committees require Committee Chairmen to give particular attention to such economic impact statements. In providing for these safeguards, we must not, however, overlook the fact that the Commission has to operate within the framework of its Statutes. That means that it has the fundamental task of protecting the health of consumers and ensuring fair practices in the food trade.
Another development of particular interest to developing countries was the establishment of Regional Coordinating Committees for Africa, Asia and Latin America in the 1970s. Their original terms of reference have been extensively widened. Some of them are developing standards for products of importance in intra-regional trade as well as for staple items of traditional diets. All of them are providing very useful fora for determining food quality and safety control needs and for promoting technical cooperation among developing countries within the regions. There is no doubt that the Coordinating Committees have had and continue to have a very significant impact on the programme of work of the Commission. Whilst as much as possible should be done to promote the work of the Regional Codex Coordinating Committees, it is very important in the first place for the countries themselves in the different regions to make known their views and wishes through actual participation in the meetings of the Coordinating Committees. That means: the developing countries should be more aware of this instrument to articulate their needs and interests.
The work of the Codex Alimentarius Commission is, of course, for the benefit of all Member Nations of FAO and WHO. However, some Member Nations are less well equipped than others to derive full benefit from the work of the Commission. Those less well equipped countries need technical advice and assistance to enable them to strengthen their capabilities to ensure better food handling, better quality and safety of food through food control and to implement, as far as feasible in their own circumstances, the Commission's recommendations. FAO through its projects on food control and consumer protection and WHO through its food safety activities, play a very important role in providing such assistance which is complementary to and furthers the work of the Commission. I shall not go into any detail about the important complementary activities of FAO and WHO, as during the session you will be hearing about them. Suffice it to say that there are many activities in FAO and WHO which have strongly supported the work of this Commission and continue to do so. Much is happening in both organizations, very often on a joint basis, in the fields of food safety and food control, which is indispensable to the work of the Commission. I need only refer to the Expert Groups in the fields of food additives and pesticide residues and the expert consultations in the field of food hygiene to illustrate this. A very recent development of interest has been a meeting last month in Geneva of a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Safety. All of us look forward to hearing about this meeting during the course of the session. A conference room document summarizing the conclusions of the Expert Committee has been made available.
Now I would like to say a few words on the subject of acceptances of Codex standards and Codex maximum limits for pesticide residues. You will all have read the Report of the July 1982 session of the Executive Committee, in which the Committee urged all Members of the Commission to make a special effort towards accepting the Codex standards or, where acceptance was not feasible, to respond in an otherwise favourable manner, such as, for example, notifying the Secretariat that products in conformity with Codex standards and Codex maximum limits for pesticide residues will be permitted to be distributed freely within their territorial jurisdictions. The Executive Committee also stressed the importance of Codex recommendations as a basis for domestic legislation in developing countries. The Executive Committee further expressed the hope that the issue of the various volumes of the Codex Alimentarius would stimulate more countries to accept Codex recommendations or, at least, to permit entry of products in conformity with them.
Volumes II to VIII of the Codex Alimentarius have been issued in all three languages of the Commission. Volumes IX to XII have very recently been issued in English, to be followed shortly, I understand, by the French and Spanish versions. I also understand that Volume I of the Codex Alimentarius, which will not contain any standards but will be a general review of the extent of Codex work, the rationale for this work and the benefits to be derived therefrom, will be issued towards the end of the year. I am also told that Volume XIII of the Codex Alimentarius, containing all maximum limits for pesticide residues adopted up to and including the Fourteenth Session of the Commission, is currently being processed and will also be issued in a few months time.
Acceptances are continuing to come in, as you will hear shortly from the Secretariat. But they do not come in to the extent that one might reasonably have hoped for. Of course, we are all aware of the importance of the Codex recommendations as authoritative reference material, and we know that they are valued and used as such. Nevertheless we must remember that one of the main reasons for the existence of the Food Standards Programme is the need to remove non-tariff barriers to trade represented by differing national or community food regulations. Now that the Codex Alimentarius is being published, and with the continued efforts of the Secretariat to secure more acceptances, I do hope that by the time of the next session of the Commission there will be a marked improvement in the situation, either in terms of acceptances or in terms of statements that products meeting Codex standards and maximum limits for pesticide residues will be allowed free entry. As the Chief of the Programme said in his recent letter which he addressed to all Member Countries, many countries including, in particular, developing countries would like to use Codex standards and Codex maximum limits for pesticide residues for trading purposes. It it not unnatural that these countries should look to those countries which have participated actively from the start in the development of the standards, and which have, over the years, patiently negotiated international standards of quality and safety, to give a lead in the acceptance of the standards which they themselves have developed. We shall be hearing more about this important topic during the session.
Finally, it is my hope and my wish that this Fifteenth Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission will contribute to an even better understanding between its participants, both in their official and personal relations and to this end will strengthen the links within the community of nations.
I join with Mr. Kermode in wishing you a very pleasant stay in this beautiful city of Rome and a very successful session.
