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50 years of improving food safety

Codex aims to protect consumers’ health and ensure fair practices in the food trade. The Commission, whose collection of food standards is titled the “Codex Alimentarius”, (Latin for ‘food code’), celebrates its 50th anniversary in July 2013. Today, the body encompasses 185 Member States, the European Union, and many observers from other UN organizations, intergovernmental organizations and civil society.

“Improving food safety and nutritional content of food to ensure health of all people in a globalized world remains a challenge for all governments around the world,” says Dr Kazuaki Miyagishima, Director of the WHO Department of Food Safety and Zoonoses. “Codex is operating as a transparent, international forum for consensus building for food safety standards, which is open not only to national food control authorities but to the civil society representing consumers, scientists and food producers.”

Since its creation the Commission has adopted several hundred standards that proved to be critical tools to

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