Codex Alimentarius

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Issue in Brief:
The Codex Alimentarius Commission was formed in 1962 under the joint sponsorship of the U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Codex, which comprises about 165 countries worldwide, is a scientific body that develops the international standards for food safety. Its goals are essentially twofold: To protect public health and to promote fair trade practices.

The Uruguay Round of trade talks that created the World Trade Organization named Codex as one of the recognized standard-setting bodies. (For more information on the WTO, click here.) Codex is the internationally accepted food safety standards designated by the WTO agreement to settle trade disputes involving food, specifically as they relate to application of the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). As a result, Codex is now the yardstick used to measure and evaluate national food regulations.

Codex is instrumental in ensuring that trade barriers have a basis in science and protect human health or promote fair trade. However, because Codex standards are used to settle trade disputes under SPS, some countries have attempted to weaken the scientific foundations of Codex to promote an anti-trade agenda in biotechnology products. Some countries, such as the E.U., are trying to undermine WTO's SPS and TBT agreements by injecting socioeconomic factors into Codex's decision-making process.

Specifically, the E.U. is urging Codex to adopt unscientific labeling, traceability, and precautionary principle approaches based on cultural, social, and political considerations. Codex's adoption of these proposals would clear the way for the E.U. to erect trade barriers against biotechnology foods without running afoul of the SPS, which says that regulations must be science-based, and TBT, which says that unnecessary obstacles to trade are to be avoided. These efforts would forestall any U.S. effort to challenge E.U. restrictions on trade in biotechnology-derived foods under the WTO.

The different legal, social, cultural and political practices throughout the world make it difficult to see how anything other than objective science-based standards could harmonize trade and protect consumers. Indeed, the patchwork quilt of national regulations that would result from the E.U. proposals would disrupt international trade, especially U.S. agricultural exports, and provide no additional consumer protection.

The Codex Commission has devoted a great deal of its time in the past few years on these issues and has formulated draft proposals for consideration that contain precautionary, labeling and traceability provisions. Throughout these discussions, the United States, with the support of BIO, has maintained its position for science-based standards.

Labeling
The E.U. has advocated the Codex Committee on Food Labeling to adopt mandatory labeling, similar to proposals the European Commission has proposed for the E.U. Such a standard would not satisfy the scientific principles of Codex and would fall outside the scope of mandated work of Codex.

The scientific consensus, recognized by Codex, is that foods produced through biotechnology that are compositionally and nutritionally equivalent to conventional counterparts raise no safety or nutritional concerns. Thus, they do not warrant mandatory labels. However, mandatory labels should be required when there are meaningful safety and nutritional differences in the biotechnology food, such as the introduction of material from a known food allergen or a significant change in nutritional properties.

Requiring information regarding the method of production on the food label is impractical and inequitable. The difficulties and costs in applying labeling requirements to commingled commodity products used in prepackaged foods that contain ingredients from numerous sources are substantial and would be borne by consumers, regardless of their own concerns or preferences and without providing a greater measure of safety. Moreover, conventionally produced foods would have to be tested to ensure that adventitious presence of any biotechnology products would not exceed an allowable threshold, which would most likely be set at a fraction of a percent. Again, the increased costs would be borne by consumers.

BIO believes that voluntary claims on labels-provided they are factual, verifiable and not misleading-can provide consumer choice and can allow the growth of niche markets for consumers willing to pay for products produced in a particular way, as in the case of organic foods. (For more information on labeling, click here.)

Traceability
Linked to the proposal for mandatory labeling is the concept of traceability. A traceability requirement would force companies to document the presence of biotechnology foods-and only biotechnology foods-through each stage of production and distribution. The ostensible purpose is to facilitate the removal of a product from the market should it be found to pose a risk. It would also be used to support long-term monitoring for potential health or environmental effects and to verify labeling claims.

BIO believes that traceability is unmanageable, costly, and contrary to Codex's scientific principles. In the United States, biotechnology products, provided they are substantially similar to products of conventional breeding, do not have to be traced through production and distribution channels. While segregation is used for high-value products, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, imposing a traceability regimen on commodity products, such as corn or soybeans, would add to the complexity and cost of the distribution system.

To accomplish segregation, farmers would have to completely prevent pollen flow from biotechnology to non-biotechnology crops. Further, farmers and food processors would have to ensure that each piece of equipment used to harvest, transport or store the product was thoroughly cleaned. Testing for trace amounts of biotechnology products would also have to be conducted at each step of the way. The unintentional commingling of biotechnology products with "biotechnology free" products could subject growers, distributors, and exporters to liability despite their best efforts. Once again, food consumers would be the ones paying the extra costs for these measures without any benefit.

Precautionary Principle
The E.U. also is pushing for Codex to adopt the "precautionary principle" in its framework for risk analysis. This unscientific principle states that governments may apply restrictions on products if there is any perceived uncertainty concerning risk, even if that risk is extremely remote or hypothetical. The E.U.'s statement on the precautionary principle maintains that application of the precautionary principle in a political decision that may be based on a "less objective appraisal" of risk.

The precautionary principle provides the basis for the E.U.'s proposed regulations for biotechnology products, scheduled to come into effect in 2003. These rules would severely affect farm exports to one of America's largest trading partners.

The socioeconomic and political dimensions of the precautionary principle would undermine the scientific basis of Codex and permit unnecessary obstacles to trade that go against WTO agreements. BIO supports a science-based risk assessment model similar to that used in the U.S. regulatory system, which focuses on probable risks. A risk-based system protects consumers, promotes trade and allows innovation to proceed.

Resources:
Codex Alimentarius Commission

Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on Foods Derived from Biotechnology:

• Report of the Third Session, Yokohame, Japan (March 4-8, 2002).
  Access meeting agenda items here.
• Report of the Second Session Chiba, Japan (March 25-29, 2001).
  Access meeting agenda items here.
• Report of the First Session, Yokohame, Japan (March 14-17, 2000).
  Access meeting agenda items here.

• Report of the Thirteenth Session of the Codex Committee on Food Labelling Halifax, Canada (May 6-10, 2002).
  Access the meeting agenda here. Access previous meeting reports and agendas here.

• Report of the Seventeenth Session, Paris, France (April 15-19, 2002).
  Access meeting agenda here.
  Access previous meeting reports and agenda items here.

• Report of the Tenth Session, Brisbane, Australia (February 25-March 1, 2002).
  Access meeting agenda here.
  Access previous meeting reports and agenda items here.

• Food and Agricultural Organization, Biotechnology and Food Safety.
• World Health Organization, Standard Setting Through the Joint FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission.

• Environmental Protection Agency Office of Pesticide Programs, Harmonization and Regulatory Coordination.
• Food and Drug Administration Codex Activities.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service, US Codex Office.
  Coordinating office for all U.S. government Codex activities.
• U.S. Department of State.
• U.S. Trade Representative.

• Australia
• Canada
• European Union, International Food Safety Issues

• European Commission, Proposal for a Regulation Concerning Traceability and Labelling of Genetically Modified Organisms and Traceability of Food and Feed Products Produced from Genetically Modified Organisms and Amending Directive 2001/18/EC (July 25, 2001).
• European Commission, Communication from the Commission on the Precautionary Principle (February 2, 2000).

• The Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology Roundtable
  Can There be a Peaceful Coexistence Between the Codex Alimentarius and the Biosafety Protocol in Managing Risks for International Trade in Biotechnology?
  Read the roundtable.
• AgBioForum, The Codex Alimentarius Commission and GM Food Labeling, 3(4), 2000.
  This issue of the online journal is devoted to the impact of labeling on international trade.
• Ronald Bailey, The Looming Trade War Over Plant Biotechnology, CATO Institute, Trade Policy Analysis No. 18 (August 1, 2002).
• Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods.
• Consumers International.
• General Accounting Office, International Trade: Concerns over Biotechnology Challenge U.S. Agricultural Exports, GAO-01-727 (June 15, 2001).
• Indur Goklany, Applying the Precautionary Principle to Genetically Modified Crops, Center for the Study of American Business, Policy Study No. 157 (August 2000).
• Grocery Manufacturers Association, Codex Alimentarius.
• International Association of Plant Breeders (ASSINSEL), Statement on Factors Influencing the Elaboration of Codex Standards (1998).
• International Council of Grocery Manufacturers Associations.
• International Life Sciences Institute.
• National Food Processors Association, Fact Sheet, Codex Alimentarius.
• Organic Consumers Association.
• Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, Dispute over Labeling of GM Foods Threatens Billions in Trade (2002).
  Read the issue brief here.
  Read the policy dialogue here.
• Truth About Trade and Technology

For more links, click here.