Codex approves over 500 new food safety standards at 45th Commission
The Codex Alimentarius Commission has adopted a series of new food safety standards at its 45th session which drew to a close on 13 December 2022.
Eleven new texts include guidelines on ready-to-use therapeutic foods and on the management of biological foodborne outbreaks; a code of practice for the prevention and reduction of cadmium contamination in cocoa beans, and six new commodity standards. The Commission also established 476 new maximum residue limits for pesticides and 13 maximum levels for contaminants.
Also, a decision tree has now been added to the Codex General Principles of Food Hygiene (CXC 1-1969) as a tool for all stakeholders in the food production chain to determine critical control points (CCPs) when applying the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) process. The tree consists of a series of four questions to be addressed at each step of the process where a specific hazard has been identified. It has been designed for use in a variety of food production settings, including in production, slaughter, processing, storage, distribution or other processes.