Agence France Press | June 26, 2003
Experts from around the globe are to gather under UN auspices next week to adopt new standards in food safety, with biotechnology, intensive farming and refinement becoming major public health issues, the UN's food and agriculture agency said.
The Codex Alimentarius, a joint body of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), will start work at FAO headquarters here Monday for a week-long session attended by 600 experts from 168 countries.
The UN commission will try to address rising concerns "about the safety of the food chain, including worries about the use of irradiation and biotechnology in food production, as well as diseases linked to intensive animal farming and increased trade," an FAO statement said on Wednesday. "The Commission will adopt standards relating to food safety, including standards for levels of radiation allowed in food irradiation; principles of meat hygiene, a code of practice on good animal feeding, including feed additives," the statement said.
The meeting comes with the memory still fresh of Europe's "madcow" beef scare, and amid a bitter US-EU rift over genetically modified foods that the US sees as a way to ease world hunger.
The meeting will also tackle "guidelines for food import control systems, standards for food additives, principles for risk analysis of foods derived from modern biotechnology, including genetically modified organisms and the use of genetically modified micro-organisms in food and beverage production."
New standards for other items, from chocolate to olive oils to yoghurt and cheese, will be discussed.
The committee also plans to streamline so that "food standards can be developed more rapidly at the international level with an increased focus on the health of consumers and with greater active participation by developing countries," the statement said.
Washington has been trying to pressure the EU, which has a moratorium on the use of GM crops, to accept bio-engineered food and has prodded the World Trade Organization to help in the drive.
But critics of GM foods say long-term health risks have not been fully studied, and that risks remain.
Others contend the Bush administration supports the practice because of successful lobbying by large corporations that want to peddle their goods in the developing world.Agence France Press:
