Codex Alimentarius Urged To Support Diet, Nutrition, Prevention

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Codex Alimentarius has been reluctant to fulfill its responsibilities of improving public health by nutrition and diet. The international agency passed potentially restrictive guidelines on food supplements in its 2005 plenary session but it has now been asked to move towards a more positive policy. In recently filed comments, South Africa has asked that the agency's previous equivocal stand should give way to a clear expression of support for the health of populations through nutrition as an important preventive tool to reflect the World Health Organisation's Global strategy on diet, physical activity and health.

Optimal health through nutrition is foundational to the very purpose for which Codex exists.
Image: Codex Alimentarius

Already in 2003, the South African delegation to the Codex Nutrition Committee proposed to amend the then under discussion food supplements guidelines, in the sense that

"people should ... be encouraged to select a healthy diet and supplement this diet with those nutrients for which the intake from the diet is insufficient to meet the requirements necessary for the prevention of chronic diseases and/or for the promotion of health beyond the demands of preventing micronutrient deficiencies."

Again in June 2004, South Africa opposed a Codex health claims rule which states that "no information may be given regarding any food's effects for the prevention, alleviation or cure of any disease."

South Africa is one of the very few voices of sanity in a health debate that generally favors pharmaceutical intervention over such time-proven methods as eating well, exercising and supplementing any nutrients that may be missing, to achieve optimal health. The country's latest recommendation to Codex urges that

- nutrients should not be seen or be treated as though they were toxins;

- the sales of dietary supplements throughout the world should be unrestricted;

- trans fats added by hydrogenation of vegetable oils should be banned;

- the addition of nutrients to foods should be encouraged;

- industrial toxins in foods should be strongly restricted by legislation;

- the decline of nutrients in food crops should be compensated and nutrient density of foods optimized;

- optimal nutrition should be encouraged and supported by national and international policies;

- nutrition and health claims for junk foods should be discouraged while such claims should be encouraged for healthy foods;

- foods should be truthfully and accurately labeled;

- junk food advertising to children and young people should be banned and

- the respective chairs of the Codex Committees for food labeling (CCFL) and for nutrition (CCNFSDU) should be required to report in regular intervals on the status of implementation of the WHO's Global Strategy on diet, physical activity and health as well as the above proposed policies.

It remains to be seen whether other countries will support these clearly reasonable recommendations. Read the full reasoning for the proposed policy changes and the South African recommendations here:

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COMMENTS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

e-Forum on the Codex Alimentarius implementation of the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (DPAH): 15 February 1 April 2006


Background

WHO has assigned Codex a definite affirmative and definite responsibility to become involved in global activities to positively improve the health of consumers worldwide and implement the WHO/FAO GLOBAL STRATEGY ON DIET, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND HEALTH as noted in section 229 of the Report of the 28th Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting (Rome, Italy, July 4-9, 2005), Alinorm 05/28/41, (hereafter called the Report) which memorialized that assignment by stating

“The Representative of WHO drew the attention of the Committee to the fact that the WHO/FAO GLOBAL STRATEGY ON DIET, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND HEALTH had been developed at the request of Member States of WHO to reduce morbidity and mortality due to non-communicable disease and that the paper LIM-6 had been prepared at the request of the 55th Session of the Executive Committee.”

The Representative pointed out that the World Health Assembly (WHA) Resolution 57.17 endorsed the above strategy and called upon the Codex Alimentarius Commission to continue to give full consideration, within the framework of its operational mandate, to evidence-based action it might take to improve the health standards of foods, consistent with the aims and objectives of the strategy. The Representative of WHO referred to the potential work to be undertaken by the Committees on Food Labelling and on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses and emphasized that coordinated work was needed to implement the Global Strategy." Section 232 of the Report focused on the importance of its implementation and "proposed that stakeholders, including consumers organizations, be consulted if a more focused document was to be developed by WHO." while the Report notes "that there was scope within the mandate of Codex for the nutritional issues raised by the Global Strategy to be integrated into Codex work."

Section 233 of that Report recorded that "the Representative of WHO reaffirmed that stakeholders would be involved in the follow-up to the Global Strategy by WHO and in the development of a revised WHO submission to be presented to the next session of the Commission" which anticipated report was to be based, according to section 234, upon the actions of those committees involved in this work. Clarifying this issue, "the Commission noted that the potential areas for action by Codex identified in the LIM paper was mainly relevant for the work of the Committee on Food Labelling and the Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses". The Commission then "agreed with the recommendation of the 56th Session of the Executive Committee, to ask the WHO, in cooperation with FAO, to produce a more focused document for consideration by these Committees, including specific proposals for new work." This document was, in fact, provided to the CCNFSDU at it’s meeting in Bonn, Germany (November 21- 25, 2005). It was intended to make possible the plan of the Commission as expressed in Section 234 of the Report since "The Commission agreed that its next session would consider further the implementation of the Global Strategy, taking into account the views and proposals put forward by these Committees.”

According to the Codex Alimentarius website, the "main purposes (of Codex) are protecting the health of consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade". The first item in Codex's statement of purpose is about protecting the health of consumers. Codex standards, guidelines and regulations provide important guidance for member nations at the national level as sections 32 - 34 of the Report make it clear when it states in section 32, "...paragraph 4 of the Guidelines for the Acceptance Procedure described important principles of the Codex Alimentarius and provided guidance to member countries on how to implement or give regard to Codex standards in developing national regulations.” Section 33 states that when the same paragraph "... implied that Codex should not be involved with human health issues, (this) was not consistent with the emphasis put on Codex activities in the field of food safety and nutrition; (since) it assumed that Codex would not be involved in import issues, which was not consistent with the mandate of the Committee on Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems". So important, in fact, is the impact of Codex on the health of its members that the Report notes that it was proposed "that the use of Codex standards should be monitored in order to provide useful information on how Codex standards were adopted or taken into account at the national level" and that "the Secretariat should work with the WTO Secretariat to consider how to monitor information on the use of Codex standards." (Section 35 of the Report). This extension of the mandate and use of Codex standards, regulations and guidelines makes sense only if Codex's positive footprint on health is large and the effect of that footprint supports and facilitates the well-being, nutritional security and health status of the population of its member nations. The application and implementation of the WHO/FAO GLOBAL STRATEGY ON DIET, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND HEALTH, mandated for Codex by the WTO at the 2005 CAC meeting is designed to assist strongly in that outcome.

In section 155 of the Report, the Commission agreed to further study on recommendation #18 of the WHO/FAO Joint Consultation that it "should consider carefully whether nutrition should play a role in Codex, and if so, what that role should be." We believe that nutrition’s appropriate role in Codex is clear: Nutrition and nutritional security should play a pivotal role in Codex. It is equally clear that:

• the explicit direction of the WHO to Codex to implement the GLOBAL STRATEGY ON DIET, PHYSICAL EXERCISE AND HEALTH;

• Codex's stated main purposes; and

• Codex’s remit

all make it clear that careful consideration of optimal health through nutrition is, in fact, foundational to the very purpose for which Codex exists. Considering nutrition and optimal health, and acting to support and ensure them as mandated will avert significant burdens imposed by preventable non-communicable disease and their dire consequences for the people of the world. Doing so will also prevent a serious dereliction of duty and responsibility to the consumers of Codex' member nations by Codex. In fact, if Codex were only about trade and not about ensuring optimal health, nutritional security and well-being of consumers, there would be no need for Codex. This is especially true for the CCNFSDU and CCFL, the primary components of the Codex system with an assigned relationship to nutrition and a role to play in nutrition within Codex. The optimal health and nutritional security of the world’s consumers depend upon a positive, not an adversarial, relationship between Codex and nutrition. Consumers’ health, well-being and their very survival, however, depend to a much lesser degree on the relationship between Codex and trade.

The WHO/FAO GLOBAL STRATEGY ON DIET, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND HEALTH clearly states that chronic diseases are preventable and that the developing world is facing massive