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Review of New Zealand’s Strategic Objectives in Codex 2005-2008

2 Background

Codex was established in 1962 by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. Its primary purpose is to establish a body of international standards and related texts for use by member countries, for consumer health protection and international trade. Codex seeks to fulfil its twin mandate of health protection and ensuring fair practices in food trade through the work of its Committees. Codex standards are recognised as international benchmarks for many developed and developing countries.

Codex comprises several levels. The Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) is the governing body of Codex and makes the final decisions on all standards, texts and guides produced by the Codex system. The Executive Committee is a smaller group of countries and is responsible for providing standards management and strategic advice to CAC. General subject, or horizontal, committees consider standards applicable across the food chain (such as food hygiene, food labelling and contaminants and additives) and commodity committees are responsible for the development of commodity specific standards (such as fish, milk, meat, and fruits and vegetables). Codex also utilises task forces for specific pieces of work. There are also six regional coordinating committees to cover the globe and bring together regional members to discuss and further Codex work and priorities. New Zealand belongs to North America and the South West Pacific Committee. The current members of this regional committee are; Australia, Canada, Cook Islands, Federate States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, United States, and Vanuatu.

New Zealand has been a member of Codex since its inception and NZFSA is the lead agency for Codex in New Zealand. NZFSA’s Mission is to protect consumers and enhance New Zealand’s position as a trusted supplier of food.

To achieve this NZFSA has three chief outcomes:

• Improved safety and suitability of food

• Effective government role in facilitating commerce and market access

• Consumer good practices and choices that support better health

NZFSA as part of its mandate to enhance New Zealand’s position as a trusted supplier of food seeks to ‘utilise any capacity to improve business opportunities for domestic and export focussed food and related industries’ and to ‘work at the multilateral and bilateral level to ensure neither international standards nor importing country standards pose unjustified technical barriers to trade’. New Zealand achieves this in part through the positions it adopts at Codex and other international standard setting bodies.

In 1996, New Zealand formulated a Strategy to guide participation in Codex. This Strategy was revised and updated in 2001 and most recently in 2005. The 2005 Strategy outlined a number of objectives that a small, food producing nation with a focus on food safety, consumer protection and trade could reasonably expect to achieve within a large international organisation, often characterised by strong competing and divergent views.

The objectives identified in the Strategy were:

• Promote the application of sound science and risk assessment in Codex standards development.

• Promote fair trade principles in Codex standards and recommendations

• Strengthen the Codex system

• Promote effective representation of New Zealand’s interests in Codex

• Consultation and communication