Geneva
2 July 2001

24^th Session, Codex Alimentarius Commission

Mr Chairman,

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you all here to Geneva for this 24^th Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

The work of the Commission has always been important, but over the past few years, this has accelerated.

The reason for this, of course, is the widening effects of globalization. Consumers have recognized the reality that the trade in food and farm products is truly international - not least because countries of origin are clearly marked on supermarket produce. They are starting to discover the intricate network of international trade that underlies the food industry and brings products to supermarket shelves.

Also, there has been a series of mainly European-focused, but increasingly global, food safety alerts over the past few years, eroding the public's confidence in the safety of the food they buy.

Still, based on evidence, it is clear that the main food safety problems are not the spectacular outbreaks which make their way into the media. In fact, the problem is a vast number of sporadic cases, many of which not only fail to reach the headlines; they don’t even make it into our reporting system.

We estimate that almost 2 million children die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by contaminated food and water. We estimate that thousands of millions of cases of food-borne disease occur every year. And it is estimated that even in industrialized countries one third of the population has a food-borne disease event every year, and up to 20 people per million die from such diseases. These estimates relate, of course, primarily to microbiological problems. When we add disease stemming from chemical hazards in food, which is substantial but more difficult to estimate precisely, the total burden looks even more astounding.

In addition to the direct health consequences, food-borne diseases can impose a substantial strain on health care systems and markedly reduce economic productivity. Very recent estimations from USA suggest an annual cost to that society of 6,9 billion dollars. Risks, real or perceived, in chemical contaminants, microbiological hazards, and genetically modified organisms, have made food safety a priority concern in many of our Member States. They have also led to a clear prioritization of food safety as an important area of work within the World Health Organization.

In short, globalization of the world’s food supply also means globalization of public health concerns.

With the establishment of the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement, which recognizes Codex as the international reference point for science-based food safety standards, the fundamental character of the Commission has shifted from a voluntary standards setting agency to one that establishes health and safety requirements for food. These requirements have consequences for national food safety legislation. The standards the commission sets can affect trade in food products, having serious implications for countries' exports.

Let me first comment on the current realities of global food safety from the standpoint of WHO, and based on that move on to how I see the Codex can best fill its role in the years to come.

I see three major challenges to protect the health of the consumer:

• We need to improve the systems we use to ensure food safety and re-establish consumer confidence, we must reassess them all the way from the farm to the table;

• We need to ensure reasonable food safety standards that apply throughout the world and assist all countries to reach these standards. In the long run, it is in our own self interest to do so. Unless we do so, developing countries cannot participate in global trading systems;

• We must develop global standards for pre-market approval systems of genetically modified food to ensure that these new products not only are safe, but also beneficial for consumers and more efficient than existing products.

Between the 1950s and 1980s, we saw tremendous improvements in the safety of the food we eat in the industrialized countries.

What we can call the "first wave" of food safety measures came with the pasteurization of milk and milk products and the introduction of rigid and effective hygiene systems in the production chain, mainly from the dairy and the abattoir to the supermarket.

The "second wave" of food safety measures came with the widespread introduction of HACCP; the hazard control system for the production chain.

Yet, since the early 1980s, we have seen a marked increase in the reports of food-borne diseases, resulting from pathogenic microorganisms, basically in almost all countries with reporting systems.

The number of confirmed cases of human disease caused by Salmonella has increased significantly since 1985 - as much as five-fold in some European countries. For Campylobacter the increase has in some countries been even higher.

This situation, and associated loss of public confidence, suggest that something has gone wrong. We need a "third wave" of food safety measures.

This third wave must be a focus on the direct risk to humans. We need to begin with the epidemiology of food-borne diseases and track them back through the food chain, all the way to the farm. This represents a tremendous challenge.

Meanwhile, in developing countries, we have a considerably more complex situation. Many developing countries have major food exports complying with international standards - Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India, China and South-East Asia, to mention a few. Many of these countries also have large, sophisticated domestic food industries which supply high-standard products to millions of middle-class consumers. There are for example probably more refrigerators in India than in France.

Yet, food-borne diseases kill millions of people - especially children - each year. Enormous productivity-loss is caused by the thousands of millions of cases of non-lethal food-borne disease.

There is a close and important link between health and economic development. Not only can the economic consequences of contaminated food be staggering. The economic opportunities for developing countries that can ensure satisfactory food safety standards are substantial.

It is of crucial economic interest to developing countries to achieve quality and safety for their products at international levels. And it is in the interest of the industrialized countries to help them achieving this.

In order to ensure the safety of foods consumed, we need to develop global food safety. The technical and financial assistance from the developed world to the developing world is the cornerstone to achieve this.

As the movement of people and trade of foods - including ingredients and food animal feeding stuffs - becomes more and more global, it turns out to be more and more difficult to solve food safety problems by one country without international collaboration and a consolidated strategy to combat problems. In a globalized world, we all swim in a single microbial sea.

To ensure global food safety, the voice of developing countries should be well-heard and developing countries should be a key player. Thus, participation of developing countries in the process of international rule setting, such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission, is important.

For the first time in many years the World Health Assembly passed a food safety resolution in May 2000 with reference to food safety as an essential public health issue. The resolution focuses on the need to develop sustainable, integrated food safety systems for the reduction of health risk along the entire food chain.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is key to such efforts. It is the most important vehicle of the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme, which is one of the best examples of efficient and timely collaboration between UN bodies. As you know, we have over the past year substantially increased our resources in this area and taken a more active role within the Commission.

One way we have been scaling up is through a clear strengthening of the scientific basis from which Codex develops its work. We have initiated an Expert body to deal with microbiological hazards the same way we have for the last forty years been dealing with chemical hazards. And we have developed a series of Expert meetings to look into the safety and risk assessment of foods derived from biotechnology.

A second way has been to scrutinize our working relations with FAO and the work of the Codex Secretariat with a view to attain greater transparency.

We are delighted that the collaborative effort between WHO and FAO has been strengthened over the last two years. We put great emphasis on this collaboration, and I communicate regularly with Mr Diouf at FAO on these matters.

I am happy to report to you that a direct link now exists at the Executive or Assistant Director-General level of our two organizations, represented by Ms Kern and Mr De Haen, who are present here today.

Why is this collaborative effort so important? Firstly there is a general need to look at many of the international tasks, from development to environmental or food safety issues from a holistic point of view. Sustainable development will not be possible to implement in a piece-meal manner. Different authorities at the national level and certainly different international organizations will have to work together and coordinate their efforts for this to work.

But more specifically in the food safety area: here it has been recognized that a number of the problems that have marred this over the last decades have not directly been caused by, but certainly has been augmented by, lack of collaboration between different authorities at the national level. Therefore I am happy to report to you that our collaboration in this area is alive and even improving rapidly these years. In fact most of our new activities are now developed through efficient direct interaction between Geneva and Rome. Governments across the globe are increasingly finding themselves urgently in need of upgrading their domestic food safety systems. In many developing countries, however, there is often no comprehensive food safety system in place to restructure in the first place.

While this in itself is negative it provides an opportunity for these countries to "leap-forward" up to current food-safety systems. Developing countries should skip over all the decades of gradual progress and hard-earned experiences of industrialized countries and adapt modern food safety systems that work well. Based on the specific country needs, the most essential elements of food safety systems should be expeditiously brought together to develop tailor-made food safety legislation and regulations in the context of public health policy development.

We are happy to report that WHO and FAO are taking important new initiatives in this area.

The "leap-forward" approach will promote the efficient and effective development of food safety systems, incorporating preventive, risk-based approaches, comprising surveillance, risk assessment and implementation of risk management strategies.

This is a win-win situation. Industrial countries will get better reassurances that food imports are safe, while developing countries will improve both domestic food production standards and be able to expand their export markets.

But to do so, we need to build capacity in developing countries.

We must consider ways to improve participation of developing countries in the work of the Commission. In this context, I welcome the FAO's new "facility" for capacity building, which will go a long way in assisting the least developed countries to gain the expertise necessary to more actively participate in the Codex work.

We should also be looking at ways of supporting developing countries in coming together in advance of Commission meetings in order to align and strengthen each others work in the Commission. This could take the form of regional meetings, or it could find some other form.

Chairman,

Modern technologies must be thoroughly evaluated if they are to become a true improvement in our way of producing food.

Public health can benefit enormously from biotechnology’s potential to increase the nutrient content of foods, decrease their allergenicity, and improve the efficiency of food production. On the other hand, the potential negative effects on human health of the consumption of food produced through genetic modification must be carefully examined.

A number of statements from regulators, producers and scientists involved in the area of biotechnology seem to suggest that they feel the problems originate in the consumers incapacity to understand and scientifically compare the risk of biotechnology foods to the risk of traditional food.

To base future deliberations upon this view could be a very serious second mistake. The first mistake has been not to involve consumers - and other interested parties - in the risk analysis process. The process of a scientific assessment and the following management decisions was considered by many regulators to be too complicated for the common consumer.

Through the Codex system, FAO and WHO have initiated a process to get international agreement and standardization in this area. This is a crucial step towards getting consumer involvement in the evaluation of new technology and assessing the benefits from using these new technologies.

Safety is a key issue, but it is not the only one. We must also answer questions about whether genetically modified food is beneficial, and for whom.

Possible adverse health and environmental effects need to be addressed. The scope should include both safety, nutritional and environmental aspects, as well as efficiency and socio-economic considerations. We must agree on standardized methodology at the international level also in this area. A regulatory framework should be in place to form pre-market evaluations - not ad-hoc tests after the products have come on the market.

Mr Chairman,

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is a body owned and driven by its 165 Member States. Changes in the Commission should happen on the request and under the guidance of the members.

It is clear that our Members want change. They want a commission that can be in the forefront in the work to improve food safety standards and systems in all countries. It is also clear that they expect the Codex Secretariat - and the two organizations hosting it, to come up with the ideas for how the Commission can work better faster and to implement these changes.

The mid-term plan has defined several proposals for change. So have the proposals of the Commission chairman, Tom Billy, which incorporates a wide range of ideas for change and improvement put forward by many parties. These are all an excellent basis for discussion.

Let me just add a few words on where WHO sees that change is beneficial.

Obviously, we must increase the work on health-related issues, including work to ensure that there are clear and useful international guidelines for genetically modified food.

An increased use of time-limited task forces would not only provide incentives to speed up the work, but it will also be a way of taking up new issues and better coordinate work that would otherwise fall across several of the Codex Commissions.

We need to support the full participation of all countries, including developing countries in important Codex work. To have and to feel ownership of the product you have to participate in the process. Therefor WHO will look into the potential to set up a trust fund for increasing developing countries' participation in the Codex work, especially focusing on health.

Speaking of the health sectors we need to focus significantly more attention to the surveillance of foodborne disease and improve the link to food monitoring. In most countries this will not be possible without increased capacity building efforts. WHO will focus support to the Codex work to these important new areas.

The scientific basis for Codex work has always been the FAO/WHO Expert groups. JECFA and JMPR has looked into chemical risks for more than 40 years, we have now added new Expert meetings in microbiology and biotechnology. We should look into ways of formalizing and standardizing all this work, maybe under one Expert body umbrella, which would be able to function in a more transparent, efficient and independent manner, taking up both traditional and new problem areas. WHO is already focusing extra support to Codex work in this important area.

We should also consider ways to facilitate a more efficient way for the committees to work. We should look at how the meetings function, how we can improve communication and better take the work forward between meetings. We also need to improve the interaction between expert bodies and the Codex committees, making full use of the new telecommunications technology. WHO will try to focus extra support to the Codex Secretariat in these areas.

We also need to inform the public about the work of the Commission better than we currently do.

To a large extent, the Codex Commission is a model of transparency. The meetings are open, the Commission publishes all its work and its web site must be commended for being comprehensive and consumer friendly.

Yet, we should consider whether the Commission needs to be more proactive in its contact with the public, both to publicise its own good work, but particularly to assist in spreading knowledge about existing food safety standards and the work that is being done to ensure global safety of food products.

In this process we should acknowledge the consumers right to be concerned as well as to be informed. In realizing the increased need for communication of risk, the goal for the regulators should not only be to gain the trust of the consumers. The main communication challenge is to adequately address all potential safety issues of food products, and in doing so acknowledging the input from all interested parties participating in the overall risk analysis process.

Mr Chairman,

The work of the Codex Alimentarius Commission is more important than ever. WHO is fully committed to promoting health and equity through increasing the safety of food. The emphasis is on actions that reflect people's health priorities in resource-limited settings. Hence, WHO will do what it can to build its contributions on risk assessment by supporting health action within Codex in ways that best serve Member States and their people, particularly in developing countries.

Thank you.