FAO is involved in providing technical assistance to enhance effective participation of member countries in Codex and in the implementation of its recommendations, guidelines, and standards. The capacity building on Codex at national, sub-regional and regional levels includes seminars, training of trainers' courses, workshops, preparation of tools, as well as field projects and experts' missions. These activities aim at highlighting specific issues, establishing or strengthening National Codex Committees or Codex Contact Points, raising awareness, and also facilitating the constructive exchange of information on Codex.

A joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on the Safety Assessment of Foods Derived from Recombinant-DNA Animals was held at the Headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva from 26 February to 2 March 2007. The objective was to provide scientific advice to FAO/WHO and their Member States on two sets of questions regarding: i) marker and reporter genes; and ii) non-heritable applications. The Codex ad hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on Foods Derived from Biotechnology had specifically requested advice on these questions. This Consultation built upon the conclusions and recommendations from the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on the Safety Assessment of Foods Derived from Genetically Modified Animals, including Fish (FAO/WHO 2004). A variety of reporter and selectable marker genes are...

The monographs in this volume of the FAO JECFA Monographs on the residues of, statements on, or other parameters of the veterinary drugs on the agenda were prepared by the invited experts for the sixty-sixth meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) held in Rome, Italy, 22-28 February, 2006. This was the seventeenth meeting of JECFA convened specifically to consider residues of veterinary drugs in food animals. The Committee has evaluated residues of veterinary drug s in food animals at the 12th, 26th, 27th, 32nd, 34th, 36th, 38th, 40th, 42nd, 43rd, 45th, 47th, 48th, 50th, 52nd, 54th, 58th, 60th, and 62nd meetings (Ref. 1-15 and 19-22, respectively).

Ensuring safe food is essential for the protection of human health and for improving the quality of life in all countries. The importance of safe food, whether domestically produced and consumed, imported or exported, is well known by the countries of the Americas and the Caribbean. An estimated 57,000 deaths have occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean as a result of food- and waterborne diarrhoea in 2004, but even this estimated burden likely greatly underestimates the true magnitude of the food-borne disease problem in the region. Each food-borne disease outbreak results in a number of direct and indirect costs, in addition to the resultant human suffering. Furthermore, food safety is foundational to all other issues in the area of...

This paper includes joint FAO and WHO work to evaluate the latest information and scientific evidence available on the functional and safety aspects of food probiotics, as well as the methodology to assess such aspects, by bringing together worldwide scientific experts in the field. It includes the reports of the expert consultation and of the working group. These reports provide scientific advice in relation to the safety assessment of probiotics, general guidance for their evaluation and on specific questions in relation to their pathogenicity, toxigenicity, allergenicity, as well as to their functional and nutritional properties. The guidelines for the evaluation of probiotics in foods were developed as part of this joint effort, providing criteria and methodology to assess the efficacy...

Food safety and quality are essential for food security, public health and economic development. Improving food safety is necessary to increase food security, which exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food, which meets their dietary needs and cultural preferences to have an active and healthy life (World Food Summit Declaration, 1996). Increasing the supply of safe and wholesome food reduces the impact of food-borne diseases, which cause many illnesses and deaths, as well as detrimental economic consequences, in both developing and developed countries every year. Ensuring the safety and quality of food exports promotes international trade, which provides a means to generate growth and reduce poverty.