Global Environment Monitoring System - Food Contamination Monitoring and Assessment Programme (GEMS/Food)
Introduction to GEMS/Food
Since 1976, the Global Environment Monitoring System - Food Contamination Monitoring and Assessment Programme, which is commonly known as GEMS/Food, has informed governments, the Codex Alimentarius Commission and other relevant institutions, as well as the public, on levels and trends of contaminants in food, their contribution to total human exposure, and significance with regard to public health and trade. The Programme is implemented by the WHO in cooperation with a network of more than 30 WHO Collaborating Centres and recognized national institutions located all around the world.
The GEMS/Food programme also involves national experts in more than 100 countries working to collect and to analyse data and information to support the food risk assessment process.
The GEMS/Food international databases include several important streams of data related to food contamination and food consumption:
- The level of chemicals is measured in raw food commodities as well as in food as consumed by final consumer.
- A list of the WHO 13 cluster diets, that have been created to cover the average food consumption in 13 regions of the world. These levels of consumption are used to serve as a basis for assessing the exposure to chemical contaminants from food, but can also be used for other purposes like nutritional evaluation.
Contaminants data are combined with average diet data to arrive at the total (average) dietary exposure of contaminants through food, typically referred to as Total Diet Studies. Total diet studies consist in analysing the concentration of various chemicals in food sampled on the market and prepared to account for the potential increase or decrease in concentration during the home cooking process. The samples of a considered food category are pooled in order to be representative of an average contamination and to increase the cost-effectiveness. These data provide risk assessors with a realistic picture of the distribution and trend for chemicals under consideration.
GEMS/Food regularly organize workshops to promote the Total Diet Studies and to train national responsible for food surveillance and control plan. Four international meetings and two regional ones were organized in the past few years to increase the capacity of Member States and in particular developing countries to participate in the risk assessment process.
Food contamination monitoring is an essential component of assuring the safety of food supplies and managing health risks at the international level. As such, GEMS/Food provides basic information on hazard identification for setting priorities for Codex consideration.
Within the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the chemical contamination of food is addressed by the Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA), the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food (CCCF) and the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues (CCPR). Risk management decisions are highly dependent on comparable and reliable exposure assessments and GEMS/Food has provided assistance on a range of chemical issues to CCFAC and CCPR as well as to their scientific advisory bodies, namely JECFA and JMPR.