Regulations : Codex

REGULATORY APPROACH OF CULTURES

Cultures, like any food product entering international trade are of interest to the Codex Alimentarius.

Under the joint responsibility of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Codex Alimentarius endeavors to develop international standards that protect consumers’s health and ensure fair practices in food trade.

Coping with cultures has proved difficult to Codex because some countries consider them as additives, others as processing aids, others still differently.

In Codex, food additives are defined as follows :

  food additive means any substance not normally consumed as a food by itself and not normally used as a typical ingredient of the food, whether or not it has a nutritive value, the intentional addition of which to food for a technological (including organoleptic) purpose in the manufacture, processing, preparation, treatment, packing, packaging, transport or holding of such food results, or may be reasonably expected to result, (directly or indirectly) in it or its by-products becoming a component or of otherwise affecting the characteristics of such foods. The term does not include " contaminants " or substances added to food for maintaining or improving nutritional qualities. ( Codex Alimentarius Procedural Manual, 11^th edition, page 45, Rome 2000 ).

Work on food additives has been going on for several years but has not touched on cultures. Work has not yet been conducted on processing aids which are defined as follows :

Processing aid means any substance or material, not including apparatus or ustensils, and not consumed as a food ingredient by itself, intentionally used in the processing of raw materials, foods or its ingredients, to fulfill a certain technological purpose during treatment or processing and which may result in the non-intentional but unavoidable presence of residues or derivatives in the final product. ( Procedural Manual, 11^th edition, page 47 ).

These definitions are complex and open to interpretation. They can lead to disruptions in the food trade and explain why Codex is attempting to clarify the matter. At present, the situation on processing aids is as follows :

An inventory of processing aids (IPA) has been made. It is a collection of information submitted by national authorities. Its primary purpose was to develop information on substances used as processing aids and to determine priorities for their review. But its existence raises two problems. It is not regularly up-dated and it is often mistaken for an approved list of processing aids.

Thus, the Codex has asked some countries to prepare together a discussion paper on processing aids. This document presented in february 2001 (CX/FAC 01/10 ) explores the various ways of handling this category of products. Countries had until October 2001 to send their comments.

The Codex Committee on Food Additives and Contaminants (CCFAC) will then take up the document for further discussion.