The world food standards body, the Codex Alimentarius, has asked the international food industry – via their governments – to comment on its latest batch of proposed production guidelines, this time focusing on baby food, nutrition and traceability.
The deadline for comments on a draft revised standard for processed cereal-based foods for infants and young children falls on 31 March. Also another new revised standard, covering infant formula and child food formula for special medical purposes is up for consultation – deadline 1 May. This too is the last day for comments on a related new guideline – on nutrition claims associated with dietary fibre use.
All of these proposals have been developed by the codex committee on nutrition and foods for special dietary uses.
See http://www.codexalimentarius.net/download/report/646/al06_26e.pdf for more information.
Regarding traceability, the responsible body is the codex committee on food import and expert inspection and certification systems. It has tabled draft principles for traceability/product tracing within food import and export inspection certification systems and also guidance on rationalising food import inspections, taking risk factors into account.
Here the deadline for comments is 31 March in both cases. For more information – see http://www.codexalimentarius.net/download/report/647/al29_30e.pdf.
All these new guidelines may be debated and approved at the next Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting, in Geneva, 3-8 July.
