The decision to concentrate on a reduced agenda has paid off as the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses concludes its discussions on a guideline for ready-to-use therapeutic foods and closes in on finalizing the revised standard for follow up formula.

Verna Carolissen, Codex Secretariat said on the completion of the text on ready-to-use therapeutic foods, that the principles under which Codex operates in developing a guideline of this nature are to “set the scene, and that our main focus is to provide an identity for the product, what it should comprise from a nutritional perspective, how it should be labelled and what safety information should be taken into account. And we have done that here.”

Writing in the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC44) magazine, Nolene Naicker, South Africa who chaired the working group leading the discussions on the finalization of the text, said: “These guidelines started way back in 2014 and we’ve managed to make a tremendous amount of progress so far. Countries are also waiting on [them] and we only have three issues to resolve.”

With agreement on those outstanding issues now reached the text will go forward to the next Commission for final adoption.

Work on the revision of the infant-formula standard has been progressing with carefully negotiated compromise for over ten years. This session of the committee has agreed on all outstanding issues except the text that will make up the preamble to the standard which will be discussed at the next meeting. 

CCNFSDU42, hosted by Germany virtually from a studio in Berlin, will conclude on 1 December 2021.

Learn more

Meeting documents available on the CCNFSDU42 meeting page.

Main photo © CCNFSDU Sec. Berlin Studio: (left to right) Tobias Fischer, Co-Chairpersons Anja Brönstrup and Hilde Thordsen.