From 6 to 9 November 2024, over 40 delegates from Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam attended the CCASIA Codex “Workshop on Food Control Systems and Risk Assessment” held in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China. In addition, representatives from Afghanistan, India and the Maldives participated online. China, as the Coordinator of the FAO/WHO Coordinating Committee for Asia, organized this programme.

The programme aimed to address the regional Members' needs for optimizing food control systems and improving risk assessment capabilities. It also served as a platform to further discuss work on food control and food standards in each country and in the region, to enhance the effective participation of Asian countries in Codex activities.

Yongxiang Fan, Deputy Director General of the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA), attended the meeting and delivered the opening speech. He encouraged regional Members to seize the opportunity to deepen mutual understanding, strengthen cooperation within the region, and actively engage in Codex activities. Professor Qunhong Wu, Dean of the School of Public Health Management at Harbin Medical University, welcomed the delegates of the CCASIA Member Countries, gathered in Harbin, China’s “Ice City”. Catherine Bessy, Senior Food Safety Officer of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) expressed the readiness of FAO to help Member Countries in developing their food safety capacities. Jing Tian from CFSA, who is serving as the Coordinator for Asia, chaired the workshop.

During the programme, participants listened to Catherine Bessy’s presentations on FAO’s strategic priorities on food safety, as well as on Codex and FAO’s guidance and instruments to strengthen national food control systems. They also heard from FAO food safety officers, Kang Zhou and Angeliki Vlachou on the principles, processes, and results of FAO’s risk assessments in the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Meetings on Microbiological Risk Assessment (JEMRA) and the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), respectively. In addition, participants actively participated in exercises after each session. Victor Rivera Diaz from Chile and Alexis Kabayiza from Rwanda shared their respective countries' experiences using the FAO/WHO food control system assessment tool, highlighting how such assessments contribute to strengthening national food safety strategic planning at national and regional level.

During the side event on the proposal for developing a Codex standard for sea buckthorn oil, the Mongolian delegates explained the rationale behind the proposal. The participants also actively provided comments and suggestions to this proposal.

This programme follows the CCASIA Codex colloquium held in Xiamen in 2023 and marks another important regional Codex activity. FAO experts delivered the lessons in a flexible and accessible way, and the discussions were lively, allowing participants to enhance their understanding of food control systems across the region. The participants also explored future cooperation in food safety management and risk assessment among Asian countries. This workshop was the first regional Codex workshop to be offered in a hybrid format, combining online and physical participation, which was widely welcomed by representatives who could not attend in person.

Delegates provided very positive feedback to the workshop, highlighting the importance and benefits of participation. They welcomed this capacity development activity, which responds to Members’ needs of improving chemical and microbiological risk assessment capabilities and expressed their interest in conducting assessments to evaluate the performance of their national food control systems.

As the host country of CCASIA, China will continue to promote the coordination on regional and international food standards and conduct Codex capacity-building activities in various formats. These efforts aim to promote the effective participation of CCASIA Members in Codex work and enhance international cooperation in food standards and food control in the region.

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